The Pearl That Broke Its Shell
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The Pearl That Broke Its Shell
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Narrated by:
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Mozhan Navabi
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By:
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Nadia Hashimi
About this listen
Afghan-American Nadia Hashimi's literary debut novel is a searing tale of powerlessness, fate, and the freedom to control one's own fate that combines the cultural flavor and emotional resonance of the works of Khaled Hosseini, Jhumpa Lahiri, and Lisa See.
In Kabul, 2007, with a drug-addicted father and no brothers, Rahima and her sisters can only sporadically attend school, and can rarely leave the house. Their only hope lies in the ancient custom of bacha posh, which allows young Rahima to dress and be treated as a boy until she is of marriageable age. As a son, she can attend school, go to the market, and chaperone her older sisters.
But Rahima is not the first in her family to adopt this unusual custom. A century earlier, her great-great grandmother, Shekiba, left orphaned by an epidemic, saved herself and built a new life the same way.
Crisscrossing in time, The Pearl the Broke Its Shell interweaves the tales of these two women separated by a century who share similar destinies. But what will happen once Rahima is of marriageable age? Will Shekiba always live as a man? And if Rahima cannot adapt to life as a bride, how will she survive?
©2014 Nadia Hashimi (P)2024 William Morrow PaperbacksListeners also enjoyed...
I learned a lot about a culture I know little about and totally immersed in their story.
Read it!
Empowering, Tragic and beautiful
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loved the characters
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A powerful, emotive story demonstrating female strength in the face of gender-based adversity
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But for all its emotional pull, the novel ultimately left me feeling unsatisfied—not because it lacked impact, but because it pulled away just when I most wanted it to lean in.
The structure, alternating between Rahima’s modern-day plight and Shekiba’s historical journey, was initially compelling. Yet as the book went on, I found myself increasingly frustrated. Rahima’s own story—the one we start with and are perhaps most emotionally invested in—feels prematurely abandoned. Once she escapes her abusive marriage and makes it to a women’s shelter in Kabul, the narrative simply stops. We don’t know what she does with her freedom, whether she pursues the education she once glimpsed, whether she finds meaningful work or companionship, or even whether she ever returns to her sisters or the farm. Most glaringly of all, what happened to her son? There is no mention, no reflection, not even a pang of loss. It’s as though motherhood was written out the moment it became inconvenient to resolve.
Then there’s Shekiba’s tale, passed down through the family via Rahima’s formidable aunt, who shares it with the girls in the hope of empowering them. But the question lingers: how could the aunt possibly know all this in such granular detail? Shekiba lived in a time long past, and much of what we’re told includes deeply personal moments—private conversations, inner thoughts, traumas she endured in solitude. Unless Shekiba wrote memoirs (which the book never mentions), or recounted her life in extraordinary detail to someone, it feels like a narrative convenience rather than a plausible family history.
I found the narration distracting at times. The reader used an array of voices that often felt unnecessarily theatrical or exaggerated, pulling me out of the story rather than drawing me in. In a book already juggling dual timelines and layered themes, the added vocal dramatics felt overdone.
The symbolism of Rahima adopting the name “Bibi Shekiba” at the end is touching, but again, unresolved. It hints at continuity, at rebirth, but tells us nothing about what comes next. After breaking the shell that confined her, we never get to see what she becomes.
In the end, The Pearl That Broke Its Shell is a novel with enormous promise and undeniable importance. But it is also a novel that loses courage at the finish line. For a story about liberation and reclaiming agency, it’s disappointing that the author doesn’t show us what Rahima makes of the freedom she risked everything to gain.
A Story That Captivates — Until It Abruptly Lets Go
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a bit slow
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