For many of Islam's well-crafted characters, home is a place they’ve never actually been, but somehow dream to return to someday.”

“A family, blended in unexpectedly compassionate ways, takes you on a tour of Brooklyn’s Atlantic Avenue, Bangladesh, and all the ways we make our lives more complicated than they ever had to be. An understated queer coming-of-age, a study of how much work it is to be a family, and a snapshot of a disappearing Brooklyn, set against the ghosts of the past, and a search for home.” “The miracles in Bright Lines are the understated moments of family telepathy. . “Tanwi Nandini Islam makes waves with her debut novel, which traverses from Bangladesh to Brooklyn exploring the secrets of three young women.” The New York sense of place in Bright Lines rivals the recent memory of Teju Cole’s Open City.” Hallucinations, hijabs and handlebars on the always-busy Atlantic Avenue. “A Brooklyn-by-way-of-Bangladesh Royal Tenenbaums. This is a novel that let me travel a little more fully into this city that I love, even as it reminded me of so much of why I love it in summer.” By the time we get to Charu’s friend Maya, we are in deep. “ Bright Lines is set in Brooklyn during the summer of 2003, the summer of the Blackout, and Ella is a young Bangladeshi woman growing up there, beginning the process of coming out to herself and to her adoptive uncle’s family as queer, while also being crushed out on her cousin Charu, whom she lives with. To keep his family from unraveling, Anwar takes them on a fated trip to Bangladesh, to reckon with the past, their extended family, and each other. But when tragedy strikes, the Saleems find themselves blamed. One summer, when Ella returns home from college, she discovers Charu’s friend Maya-an Islamic cleric’s runaway daughter-asleep in her bedroom.Īs the girls have a summer of clandestine adventure and sexual awakenings, Anwar-owner of a popular botanical apothecary-has his own secrets, threatening his thirty-year marriage. She traveled from Bangladesh to Brooklyn to live with the Saleems: her uncle Anwar, aunt Hashi, and their beautiful daughter, Charu, her complete opposite. Orphaned as a child after her parents’ murder, and afflicted with hallucinations at dusk, she’s always felt more at ease in nature than with people. “A Brooklyn-by-way-of-Bangladesh Royal Tenenbaums.”- The Denver PostĪ vibrant debut novel, set in Brooklyn and Bangladesh, follows three young women and one family struggling to make peace with secrets and their pastįor as long as she can remember, Ella has longed to feel at home. ONE OF THE CUT’S 13 BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS CELEBRATING PRIDE MONTH

Named a finalist for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, the Brooklyn Eagles Literary Prize, and the Edmund White Debut Fiction Award

Bright Lines by Tanwi Nandini Islam