Internment

Well, this book can serve as a reminder that a novel cannot survive on its premise alone. Internment was a novel that I wanted to love. I had seen it everywhere, from Pinterest pages to recommendations from friends and lists on the internet. I was expecting this to become a favorite of mine. Sadly, when I got this book in my hands and I began reading, I quickly realized that this author does not yet have the writing prowess to extend the characters beyond her dystopian ideas.

This novel features a seventeen year old Muslim girl, Layla Amin. One night, against her parents' wishes, she sneaks out before curfew to see her boyfriend. This is not just an ordinary curfew, this is one that is used to control those that the President deems undesirable, including Muslim people like Layla. Her parents are worried when she comes home later that night, and through them we learn how grave the situation really is. Freedom of speech is curtailed in the name of security, Layla's father is fired from the local University because of his religious beliefs, and more and more issues appear for Muslims. Eventually, one night, two men and several police officers come to the door to say that Layla and her family are being relocated to a camp, and that they have ten minutes to pack their things. They then find themselves in a camp where they have little, if any rights, and limited access to information about the outside world. Layla feels angry, and against her parents wishes, she yearns to do something, anything, to protest her treatment, but The Director, who runs the camp, will stop at nothing to maintain law and order. Can Layla survive this camp with her friends and family intact, and how much of her will be left if she does?

Note: The author, Ahmed clearly has an agenda against the Trump administration in this book. This is not surprising, considering when it was made and published, but this is still worthy of a warning. If you are someone who likes the Trump administration, this is not going to be the book for you. Just something to keep in mind.

Ahmed is an excellent writer when it comes to the dialogue of her novels. She has the ability to write them well, and allows for even mundane chatter about nerdom to sound inviting and engaging. This is something that many writers struggle with, as I have always felt that authors use dialogue just to move the plot along- not here. This dialogue did what good dialogue should always do- reveal character, develop ideas, and show the major differing viewpoints of the novel.

Yet, while Ahmed is good at using dialogue to show the disposition of her characters, many times there isn't much to write about. Layla, our Main Character (MC), tends to suffer because of this. The most memorable thing about her character is that she likes her boyfriend...that's it. She may have other interests, but they are name dropped, at best, never being explored in any major detail. We never see how being on the soccer team (I think) forms her determination, as it is named only in passing, and nothing more. She doesn't mention any other hobbies she misses, or activities that she started and dropped as a young girl, teacher she loves or hates, where she wants to go to school and study, nor even other friends she had on the outside...just her and her boyfriend, David. This makes her seem like an extremely shallow MC that I am not going to remember a week from now, much less at the end of the year.

Layla also isn't just a terribly designed character, she also makes horrible decisions, never considering the consequences of her actions. We open the novel with exposition about how life has become dangerous for Muslim Americans, with people calling for them to leave the country, and more radical groups assaulting them at night. Yet our character, despite saying she knows better, proceeds to sneak out and see her boyfriend for a few minutes just before curfew. Then, multiple times at camp, she makes poor decisions in an almost comical pattern: she says this idea she has is stupid, does the stupid idea anyway, gets caught or found out, promises she won't do another stupid idea, then repeats the cycle all over again. She never learns from her actions and keeps taking bigger and bigger risks, to the detriment of others in the camp. Layla would never think about how to fight back in a sly way, such as getting a position in an office so she can hear news to tell her fellow campers, or helping to sneak forbidden items into camp. No, she always has to be direct and forceful, then is shocked and dismayed when she is caught and must face the consequences. This makes her an unreliable MC to follow, and makes me shake my head at nearly everything she does.

This lack of characterization extends to the main villain, The Director. We are supposed to not be given a name, I presume, to show that this could be anyone who is in charge of the camp, but it is clear that this only makes him more forgettable. I never felt tension with him because he was always either creepily smiling when he was calm, or yelling and banging his fists when he was angry...there was no in between. This made for him to become a forgettable antagonist by the end of the book, who I did not care about at all. The best villains are those who you want to see get their just deserts, but, for the Director, I just wanted him to walk out of camp and never be seen again.

Then there is the political slant that this book displays. If you pay attention, you can find many different little references to the Trump campaign sprinkled everywhere in this text. They are very numerous in this book, and honestly it makes me sad. Not because of the opinion that this author has...she is entitled to her opinion, just like everyone else, but at how blatant and one sided it was. I would have loved it if this author was more subtle in her condemnation of the ‘President', and made it seem more ambiguous at who she was aiming for. Any political party can infringe on the rights of others, and that can lead to the situation found in this book. In fact, Ahmed makes numerous references to the Japanese Internment camps of WWII, with FDR being the perpetrator (a democratic president) but that is as far as it goes. Ahmed clearly has her writing guns focused on the Trump administration. I hoped she was smarter to realize the timelessness of this lesson-that any political party (conservative or liberal) can take away the rights of citizens it does not like. I was wrong. Instead she takes the easier way out and simply blames what was, at the time, the current administration. This dates the book considerably.

This book is a reminder that, as a reader, the premise might make you pick up the book, but it may not keep you reading. This was a book where I found the execution lacking and I am not eager to see if Ahmed can do better in a future novel. I give it two out of five.