~ This Green and Pleasant Land, by Ayisha Malik ~
This novel is kept extremely lighthearted despite taking on some weighty issues in UK society (such as English identity, the rise of Islamophobia, village mentality, discrimination, hate crime, etc.)
The novel begins with Bilal’s mother, Sakeena, on her deathbed. She asks Bilal for a promise to build a mosque. Bilal lives with his wife, Mariam and her son (by a former husband, Saif) in Babbel’s End, a quintessentially English village, quaint and self consciously so. It prides itself on being the essence of English rural charm. After the death of his mother, Bilal’s aunt, who lived with his mother, has a fall and needs to come and stay with him while she recovers, so Khala Rukhsana is added to his household. She becomes one of the key characters of the story, standing as she does for all things good.
Bilal is hardly a practising Muslim, but he gradually feels he wishes to build a mosque in Babbel’s End. He has support from some quarters (such as from his friend Richard, the Reverend, and from his neighbour, Margaret, who owns the farm next door to Bilal’s home and is almost embarrassing in her championing of the subcontinent. He has his ‘enemies’ too — though enemies is far too serious a word for such a novel — Shelley who raised funds to bring back the church bell and wants to keep everything exactly the same, whoever it is who grafittis his office, etc.
There are many characters crammed into this novel, most are lightly and lightheartedly drawn caricatures, making up the cast of what us nearly a comedy. The novel avoids cliches, tries to find humour even in rather weighty issues, and avoids creating villains. There are, according to the story, no bad guys, just unhappy people with different points of view.
Eventually when the village is threatened with a new road that would remove their (largely unused) church, there is unanimous agreement to deconsecrate this and make it a multi faith sanctuary instead, to keep it is use and thus justify their fight to keep it from being destroyed. A book of this kind must have a happily ever after ending. But to Malik’s credit, she manages to keep things amusing and burbling along without trivialising.
A pleasant read, but not a particularly satisfying one.
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