The Stationery Shop of Tehran

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She could still follow Claire and leave this smelly place, catch up to Walter before he finished his lunch, go home, climb into bed, and pretend never to have made this strange miscalculation. It wasn’t too late. She imagined Walter hunched over his ginger beer and lobster roll alone at that deli—poor thing. But no. She’d come here to finally find out.

Punch bags and gloves! Some of the characters on this book will piss you off so much as you remember their name (She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named!!!), use the punch bags instead of your lovely house walls or glasses! By now Roya Archer was almost American, not just by marriage but by virtue of having been in these United States for over five decades. She could remember a childhood spent in the hot and dusty streets of Tehran, playing tag with her little sister, Zari, but her life now was carefully enclosed in New England. Stay away from Zanax or any other prescribed pills, hard liquors which could deepen your depression. Try smoothies, ice cream or softer drinks! Eventually, I got an MFA in creative writing at NYU at the same time as getting my MBA. By day, I was uptown in Manhattan studying business, but by night I was downtown in Greenwich Village studying writing. It took many detours, many jobs, and many years for me to write and finish my first novel. But once my first book came out, my writing career took off.The characters in The Stationery Shop experience several devastating losses, from love to identity to miscarriage. How do they recover, and how do those losses forever change them? Can your group relate to these sorrows? What losses in your lives have forever changed you?

She said it as if she were seeing the dentist or a therapist or the pushy refrigerator salesman who had promised her and Walter a lifetime guarantee of cold milk and crisp vegetables and unspoiled cheese if only they would buy this brand-new model. Rolls of toilet papers, napkins, paper towels, anything helping you out to clean the nasty evidence of your ugly cries!A good comedy movie or TV series to binge watch! Because you're gotta remember, there are still funny things in life! From the nationally bestselling author of the “powerful, heartbreaking” ( Shelf Awareness) The Stationery Shop, a heartfelt, epic new novel of friendship, betrayal, and redemption set against three transformative decades in Tehran, Iran. The Iranian-American author Marjan Kamali, whose novel “The Stationery Shop” was published in 2019, is about to see it come to life as an HBO series.

I learned something about Iranian politics and how the 1953 coup d'etat changed this country's future. Also, the love and care that went into the Persian cuisine featured in this book had me salivating; and, Then Mr. Fakhri, with a keen instinct for a budding romance, introduces Roya to his other favorite customer—handsome Bahman, who has a burning passion for justice and a love for Rumi’s poetry—and she loses her heart at once. Their romance blossoms, and the little stationery shop remains their favorite place in all of Tehran. This book left me sobbing as it ended. There's too many times where you would want to hug each of these characters and tell them everything was going to be okay when it actually wasn't.Roya was alone waiting for her fiancé. August 19, 1953, they were going to marry - meeting at their favorite cafe, but Bahman never showed up. Roya and Walter stayed that way – foreheads touching. Of his love she had never been more sure. For every ounce of grief that she had, Walter had the same. He had labored with her in this grief, felt his way through the darkness and the depth of it, and all the time as the world carried on, he was there by her side. Walter was always there. Reliable. Trustworthy. Steady. The love that she and Walter shared was a lifeline she did not want to do without.” Now it was Claire’s turn to linger. By God, no one wanted to leave Roya alone with this . . . resident. For crying out loud. As if she, a small woman in her seventies, held any kind of power over him or anyone else anymore. As if she, Roya Archer, could torch the place down with her presence, create a blast just by being there. I decided to read this after reading reading the enthusiastic review from my GR friend, Elyse. Unfortunately I didn't respond in the same manner. There are parts of it that I really liked and parts that just drove me up the wall. Although I didn’t grow up in Iran, my life has been very much steeped in the Iranian culture from birth. Whenever I came home at the end of a school day, I spoke Persian to my parents, ate Persian food, and was encouraged to learn Persian poetry and literature.