I'll start with a quote, though not one from the book:
<blockquote>“Hard times are coming, when we’ll be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine real grounds for hope. We’ll need writers who can remember freedom—poets, visionaries—realists of a larger reality.” </blockquote>
—Ursula K. Le Guin in her 2014 National Book Award speech

It seems to me that UKL was thinking of Zain Khalid.

In his debut novel, he takes on a lot...A LOT...of terribly important subjects of immediate world relevance. As a result of this, some storytelling basics don't get their arguably necessary due, eg howinahell does a single Saudi man enter the US and live in New York City with not one soul thinking it odd he's raising kids of wildly disparate ethnic backgrounds? Social services would be involved in these kids' lives in the real NYC.

So, okay, I'm not going to go too hard after that kind of stuff because it's just not that relevant to the author's purpose. Be aware that details like this are left open, and decide if that matters a lot to you. I decided it didn't and moved on to Youssef, Iseul, and Dayo's life with Father. Salim, their radical reformist of a father, is ironically named something that means "correct, free from error, safe, intact, unharmed, unblemished, healthy" while also drinking whisky in his coffee (much against his religion's explicit orders) as he pens famously incendiary sermons on Muslim identity. (See what I mean about Child Protective Services? There'd be a home visit or two.) What makes this more important is that it's Youssef who's narrating this story...his benignly neglected son notices the father's behavior that doesn't quite fit with the mesage. He and his brothers (and Brother, his possibly real/probably imaginary/not quite sure if he's corporeal other, sometimes animal sometimes human self. The boys, like siblings do, just accept the way things are, and move on with growing up and growing apart. Youssef questions the origins of his family but never the reality of it; they, in turn, seem to know about Brother but find their own concerns...who were their parents? Where did their Imam-dad get them?...more compeling and involving than some imaginary friend of their brother's. That same brother who is the one whose non-standard thinking unearths the secrets they've wondered about.

A parent worth his salt would notice this kid's persistent and consistent hallucination and get him some help...not Salim. He's got bigger problems. He wants these boys to be models of what he thinks is right-thinking, morally correct men! While demanding they conform, he models the opposite in his Westernized behaviors, and ignores a sign of burgeoning mental health issues in Youssef. Which is why this section of the story involved me so deeply. I was malignly neglected, while being told I was not who they wanted me to be, by my family (especially my parents) and was re-experiencing the outrage I now feel at their dereliction of duty on these boys' behalf. It kept me fanning the pages for sure.

The action shifts from lower-class Staten Island in post-9/11 world to Salim's story of from whom and why he got these kids. This is interesting, but it's really lightly gone over, and is the set-up for the final section set in The Line, Saudi Arabia's astounding city of the future that they're building with the oceans of money petrochemical exploitation has given them permission to create using slave labor from around the developing world. (This isn't foregrounded, but there's a strong streak of anti-capitalism in Zain Khalid's anti-colonialism. These are very agreeable qualities to me, but note their presence before deciding to make a run at this long, magisterially paced book.) It is in this last section that I lost my sense of the author being in full control of his narrative. A disease process, the shift of Brother from a child's fantasy key to a very different one as Youssef, now a gay young adult, resumes the narrative's reins.

This near-future Paradise is poorly thought out, to me as a long term reader of speculative fiction. The satirical, I suppose, take on the use of state power melded to religious coercion (not the author's words), made me think of so many literary writers' attempts to use genre conventions in not-new, not-fresh ways to make their points. I like ambiguity, and I approve of the author's politics, but I wanted the end section to finish before it did because too many simple snips that could've brought the purpose of the piece into focus weren't made. The result is meandering and unfocused ideas veiled by some fantastical, only-slightly-exaggerated elements. Go big or go home, Author Khalid: It's SF or it's not.

What it was, as a whole read, was beautifully written on a sentence level family saga with a gay undercurrent. It really deserves praise and support because it's hugely ambitious and frankly uninterested in your whiteness. It merits your eyeblinks because it's got a solid core of story that, my crotchets and misgivings aside, is draws the story-hungry reader along.

I'm very glad I read it. I hope you will, too.

Khalid's debut tells the tale of three boys who get adopted by an enigmatic imam in Staten Island - and the book is driven by the question what moves the man of faith and causes his behavior. Unfortunately, the story lacks restraint in plotting, but it's also an interesting novel of ideas. .

I liked this book and thought it covered some really interesting topics, but unfortunately, I found the writing style to be very dense and this didn't suit me very well. Don't get me wrong, the characters were interesting and I did want to know what happened, but I just struggled to persevere through some of the arcane language.

This is a story of 3 boys who turn into 'adopted brothers' in the care of an Imam on Staten Island NY, and then years later go to Saudi Arabia following that Imam.

BROTHER ALIVE is a strange, brilliant, uneven novel with a few too many moving parts. Nevertheless, a very promising debut.

This is a well written book. It has some fine lines, an ambitious if convoluted plot, a few well-conceived set pieces, touches of magical realism, a fair share of perceptive and insightful observations, and lean dialogue. That said, try as I might I found neither the characters, nor their situations, nor the overall narrative engaging enough to arouse or hold my curiosity and attention. As a consequence, it doesn't seem fair to write much more of a review, apart from encouraging inquisitive readers to give the book a try.

So much of what made this book good (character development, diverse characters, lush prose, expansive plots) is also what made it a hard read. There is so much going on in the story that the reader never feels quite centered in the story. I thought I knew I was reading a story of three boys being raised by an iman in New York and the struggles of self-identity, feeling at home, mental illness, and sexuality. And if the book had kept to that I would have really been happy and enjoyed my reading. But at about 70% it seemed to take on a completely different tangent. Maybe I missed the signs that this is where the story was headed? It felt so unnecessary. But if the author included it then obviously I wasn't understanding something. And that is where frustration crept in. Still beautiful writing, still interesting characters.

For all the narrator's adroitness and acuity there is something, no doubt intentional, convoluted about the story he is recounting. At times it seemed that the author was more intent on impressing readers stylistically than say presenting us with a more poignant and in-depth story...

Unfortunately this novel just wasn't for me. Specifically, I found the writing really verbose and needlessly convoluted, which made it difficult to get through the story and also just didn't flow well.

Thanks to Grove Preas for the eARC!

Let me open by noting that before you read this review, you may want to look over the publisher's description of Brother Alive, which can be found here: Brother Alive.

I make this suggestion because Zain Khalid's Brother Alive has a lot going on. A. LOT. What I propose to do here is to discuss the three sections into which the novel is divided with some reflection on prose and plotting, but I won't be providing a summary. The publisher has done a much better job of that than I could.

The novel looks at the lives of three non-biological brothers, born in Saudi Arabia and being raised by a Saudi Imam currently living on Staten Island. It has elements of what may be magical realism—or real and exceptionally uncommon individual experiences. The book's three sections focus on
• The boys' childhood and their relationship with Imam Salim
• Imam Salim's recounting of his life in Saudi Arabia and why he is raising the boys
• A journey the boys take to Saudi Arabia as adults after Imam Salim has returned there.

I found the first section to be the strongest because the characters—even though only one of them is narrating this section—are so clearly portrayed, and even with the not-quite-ordinary elements in this novel I never felt like my willing suspension of disbelief was extended to a breaking point.

When I reached the second section, which is narrated by Imam Salim, I welcomed his voice. I'd seen the questions the boys he's raising had regarding both him and their birth parents, and this section provided responses to those questions and many more. I didn't feel the fondness for him that I felt for the boys, but I don't think the author wanted me to. Imam Salim is a conflicted character who inspires conflicting feelings.

In the final section, we return to the voice of the boy (now man) who narrated the first section. This is where the "rubber band" of my willing suspension of disbelief might snap. Part of the reason for this is that I simply don't know enough about daily life in Saudi Arabia and the different ways in which Islam is/isn't practiced there to be able to separate the accurate from the inaccurate. In Brother Alive, Saudi Arabia depicted in a dystopian manner in some very specific ways. I can easily accept a dystopian view of Saudi Arabia, given its human rights record and the vast disparities in wealth there, but I don't know whether I can accept the particular dystopian version of Saudi Arabia depicted in the final section of Brother Alive.

Brother Alive a a remarkable first novel given the complexity of its plotting and number of characters. If you're a reader who likes a "tidy" narrative, Brother Alive won't work for you. If you're a reader willing to embrace complexity and dissonance, Brother Alive should provide you with some satisfying reading.

I received a free electronic review copy of this title from the publisher via NetGalley; the opinions are my own.

"Blisteringly intelligent, bursting with profound feeling, and host to some of the most complex, necessary characters in recent memory.."

From my Library Journal review.

This book is complex and intricate. I found it difficult to read or follow at times because the language is so dense. It's obviously an intellectual thriller/drama about difficult subjects. I thought the narrator was fascinating but I had a hard time following the story. Even though, the writer is very talented and I'm excited to read what's next. Brother Alive is a grim story about religious fanaticism, abuse, and family.

this was an ambitious and beautifully written book about three boys being raised by a man called Imam Salim whose existence is shrouded in mysteries and secrets. i loved how the author combined surrealism with the horrors of everyday life, and i liked learning about all the secrets surrounding the boys' adoption and the truth behind the man who raised them. however, the plot was often convoluted and difficult to follow, especially in the second half. it felt a bit all over the place, like the author was trying to do too many things at once. the conclusion was also quite confusing and didn't really wrap things up in a satisfying way.

A trio of adopted brothers slowly piece together the story of their parents and how they ended in the care of a secretive imam who pushes them academically but is emotionally unavailable.

While Brother Alive is a wonderfully crafted work of fiction I did find it a bit difficult to follow the plot at times with the references to the various characters and their professions. But to put that to one side, the book is mostly about belief and how far a person is willing to go to protect and preserve it. Three boys are adopted by a man they believe to be their father. However, the truth surrounding their adoption shakes them to the core. I loved the descriptions of the futuristic housing and leisure developments and the outwardly ordered way of life there that the three brothers experience as adults seeking truth and retribution.

An exceptional debut novel, Brother Alive speaks to capitalism, faith and extremism. Very ambitious, the author may have tried to pack a bit too much into a first novel, but diving in is well worth it. Not an easy read, both because of the heavy emotion that this novel packs as well as the aforementioned ambition, a debut not to be missed.

[3.5/5 stars]

A lot of writers have called this novel ambitious, which happens to be both its biggest strength and drawback. I will start with what I loved about the novel: it READS like fiction. The world of 'Brother Alive' is illusory and yet meticulously crafted, while simultaneously drawing from many of the grim political realities that we all know far too well.

Zain is a gifted and knowledgeable writer who commits his vision to paper unyieldingly. He juxtaposes the surreal with the horrors of everyday life under late capitalism and carceral statehoods with aplomb.

However, the second half of the novel was too exorbitant, and therefore hard for me to finish. The plot should have been tighter. Maybe this is down to my own limitations as a reader, but it was difficult for me to get through the third part of the book. The novel was trying to do, and be, too many things at once.

Having said that, 'Brother Alive' is subversive and rigorously written, and Zain is definitely a writer to watch out for.

After reading the NYT "Writers to Watch This Summer" article, I decided to check out "Zain Khalid's first novel, "Brother Alive" The novel is about three unrelated brothers who are adopted together. Youssef, one of the brothers, is our narrator, and he also has an imaginary shape-shifting brother that he addresses throughout the novel. Imam Salim is the brothers' adoptive father who raises the boys at the mosque.

The novel begins in New York, but when the brothers are adults, they return to Saudi Arabia, where readers are introduced to this utopian city . The novel addresses issues of capitalism, sexuality, terrorism, and political and self-identity. They keep secrets from each other, protect each other, turn on each other, and ultimately, want to know their personal histories that left them abandoned as infants.

Has this not been such an anguishing time with mass murders in America, I may have been able to become more fully engaged with this complex novel. My attention span waned as my spirit drained, yet, I'd pick up the novel once again, delving into another chapter, feeling, at times, a bit more rejuvenated, at others more depressed, but ultimately we shared the same grief throughout the novel.

BROTHER ALIVE is an intellectual feast, an existential wail, the anguished contraction of feeling, a pyretic dream. Simply put, it's a work like no other. Stitched from three unique parts, the novel tells the story of three brothers connected not by blood or race, but by the protective gaze of their adoptive father, Imam Salim.