Review: Salaam, Paris by Kavita Daswani

Review by London Mabel


I picked up Salaam, Paris by Kavita Daswani as a sale book, so I didn't have big expectations. It's about Tanaya, a young Muslim Indian woman who's always dreamed of living in Paris. When her family wants her to marry a Muslim man living in Paris she agrees to go meet him, but instead turns her back on the arrangement and lives an independent life, eventually becoming a fashion model. The usual conflicts arise--feeling torn between her traditional upbringing and her bikini-clad magazine spreads, as well as re-meeting the man she was supposed to marry and finding herself falling in love with him.

This book was so good, and so bad. I didn't mind the fantasy setting, Tanaya's quick rise to fame etc., because other elements were realistic, such as the shocked reaction of her family, and her own torn feelings. I liked that she maintained her moral standards throughout, and the book avoided a lot of "overnight success story" clichés. I also liked that Tanaya missed her family, that she missed India, and she wasn't wholly enamored of this new lifestyle--she didn't turn overnight from a shy, obedient granddaughter to a Paris Hilton, or a western-style feminist.

BUT. I still kept waiting for her to change. The movie that makes Tanaya want to go to Paris is Sabrina, but surprisingly the author doesn't give her the same sort of transformation as Sabrina went through.  While I didn't expect Paris to fulfill Tanaya's fantasies, I thought it, or her new life, would fulfill her in some other, unexpected way. How can someone go from living the life of a child, on an allowance, with a very narrow future ahead of her--and she was never particularly rebellious--to being extremely wealthy, with enough money to do whatever she'd like with her life, and not experience Something? Surely she would have changed in terms of confidence? Feeling something new flower in her? Wouldn't she find out something important about herself? Instead, she felt like the exact same person throughout. She didn't like other people telling her what to do, but never rebelled against them (with one lame exception at the very end); and it never really felt like she was enjoying herself. Daswani never described Tanaya's experiences in Paris in a way that made me want to go to Paris. And in fact, half the book takes place in New York, which was disappointing and seemed unnecessary to the plot.

So while I loved the book for the first three quarters, my opinion crashed in the last quarter, when I realized there weren't going to be any interesting epiphanies. This is also when the almost-a-fiancé re-enters the picture. She falls instantly for him, though it's hard to understand why; and he suddenly becomes the center of her universe. She realizes she should have just married him in the first place, which is frankly the same thing I'd wondered at the beginning of the book--why wouldn't a conservative girl, who wants to live in Paris, not agree to an arranged marriage to a man who lives in Paris? (In other words, the author didn't convince me that this person, this character, had reason enough to rebel against this marriage.)

The last quarter of the book is a flat out mess--rushed, disingenuous, and finally clichéd. A book that could have been light yet subtly moving, instead turned out to be a 1980s Harlequin. Color me: Le Disappointed.