The Other Half of You by Michael Mohammed Ahmad

The Other Half of You Reviews

• 
  Ali

  This was, without doubt, my most anticipated read of 2021. Not only because Ahmad's writing is so consistently good, but because I was desperately curious about what it would be like. His debut novel the Tribe felt quite lyrical, affectionate and kinda cheeky funny. The Lebs was a ferocious tour de force, fast and furious and very scathing funny.
  The Other of You is something else again: a deeply tender novel, with a kind of ache at the centre. Bani's voice still displays the deliberately crude patios of young Western Sydney (and contrasts with the gentle formality of his father and his generation) but as you would expect from a framing device of a letter to a son, this is undercut with a seriousness of reflection and a deep preoccupation with love. This is often tangled and conflicted, and the unhappy tension of trying to balance joy and responsibility, being understood with exploring new worlds propels the narrative. There is no single world in which Bani feels comfortable, and his attempts to find a life he can live encapsulate how we find pieces of ourselves in others and in communities around us.
  Ahmad's critique of Australia's culture of white supremacy is sharp and unstinting. But I do feel as if so many of the reviews of his work focus on this exclusively, without really discussing what an exceptional writer he is. It's probably inevitable in a world where the normal perspective, language and tone is set by a white middle-class sensibility so thoroughly that any deviation from this can't be looked past or into. But both in the detail - the dark interior of the camping supply shop, the bewildering, intoxicating chaos of a messy girl's bedroom, the taste of Maccas - and in the way that a tale of angst and growth is told without feeling angsty or saccharine, there's assured confidence that carries through here.
  
• 
  Jaclyn

  I am so glad I chose to read Sydney authors this week and this book particularly. It’s set in Sydney’s western suburbs in the very communities most affected by the current Covid outbreak and lockdown right now. As with Alice Pung’s One Hundred Days the protagonist here addresses his child as he details his struggles against the demands of family, tradition, education and faith. I would love to see these two writers in conversation (this may have already happened and I missed it). At its heart this book is an Arab Romeo and Juliet love story with a much happier ending.
• 
  Craig and Phil

  Thank you Hachette for sending us a copy to read and review.
  Social observation is not only interesting but a clue to undercurrents that exist and fracture our society.
  One obvious observation is that racism is rife among all racial groups and in every society.
  Following your heart can cause detriment and heartbreak.
  Bani Adam was a pioneer in his family, the first to attend university and the first to fall for a girl who wasn’t part of the Alawite Muslim tribe.
  Traditions and families expectations weighing heavily on his shoulders.
  His experiences of growing up in Australia shaping an attitude towards all aspects of his life.
  The division between his tribe and other Muslim sects and the Islam phobia of a white community all having an impact.
  Commentary and disrespect for Aussie girls seemed commonplace maybe a mechanism to counteract the bias toward his kind.
  Misconceptions and fallacies leading the charge on both sides seeming that unity or unions were near impossible.
  A raw and insightful journey that opens the eyes.
  Literature that exposes our similarities and differences but fundamentally highlights that underneath we value family, tradition and what makes who we are.
  A great read to add to literary platter offering a unique diversity as Bani reveals to his son the choices he made.
  
• 
  Amra Pajalic

  Michael Mohammed Ahmad was a contributor to the anthology I co-edited with Demet Divaroren Growing up Muslim in Australia and I have been following his career with interest and loved The Lebs. His follow up The Other Half of You is a tender book with the main character Bani writing to his son Khalil to tell him the story about how he came to being. I love Ahmad's voice-it is so visceral and real, his descriptions just immerse me in the world and he has a turn of phrase that makes me laugh out loud. He writes about being a Leb in Sydney's Western Suburbs, an area that mirrors my reality as a Westie from Melbourne. I loved this book and can't wait to read more of Ahmad.
• 
  George

  An engaging, entertaining, humorous novel about being a Lebanese - Australian young man in his early 20s and his problems with finding a suitable woman to marry. Bani Adam completes his Bachelor of Arts degree in literature and works in his father’s very successful retail shop selling outdoor clothing and equipment. He complies with his family’s wish that he marry an Alawite Lebanese woman.
  
  An interesting book about being a Lebanese Arab living in South West Sydney in the 2010s. Bani is unusual amongst his Lebanese friends and cousins in having a tertiary education. The Lebanese Australian women are expected to be good housekeepers and have babies. There is an expectation that a Lebanese man or woman does not marry a white person.
  
  This book is shortlisted for the 2022 Miles Franklin award.
• 
  Rania T

  Love and other catastrophes on the streets of South Western Sydney. From Sahara, to Fatima to Oli, Bani Adam encounters the women that shape him into the man he becomes while leaving the strictures of his tribe behind. Raw, visceral and engaging this novel brings to life Australia's multicultural Other in a bittersweet manner.
• 
  Jennifer (JC-S)

  ‘Rust is my blood. Stardust is my soul.’
  
  This novel is presented as a story by Bani Adam to his son Kahlil. It is the story of how Bani, a young Australian Lebanese Muslim man fell found his place in the world, and the balance he found between traditional community expectations and his own aspirations.
  The story unfolds in three sections:
  
  All that was
  
  All that is
  
  All that will be.
  
  We learn of Bani’s traditional upbringing, the expectation that he will marry within his own Alawite Muslim tribe, and work with his family. Bani is the first member of his family to achieve a tertiary education: a mixed blessing which attracts both ridicule and admiration.
  
  And through this novel (I have not read Mr Ahmad’s other novels – yet) I am drawn into a world I am less familiar with inside Western Sydney. Bani wants the freedom to make his own choices, but his family see that as a rejection of all they hold dear. A series of matchmaking attempts follow as Bani’s family tries to find a wife from within the Alawite community. A brief but unsuccessful traditional marriage, which his wife agrees to because she sees it as a way of obtaining her own freedom, ends as neither of them can meet the expectations imposed. Bani tries to conform but cannot.
  
  Who is Bani? Can he step outside his family’s expectations and beyond his own prejudices to find his own more comfortable place in the world? Can the young man in flared jeans achieve his objectives?
  
  Bani falls in love with a woman he chose for himself, the woman who becomes Khalil’s mother, the woman we come to know gradually as the story unfolds. Both will need to compromise, as will their families.
  
  ‘With all due respect Kahlil, I know I was being harsh on her, but please don’t be too harsh on me: I am the other, and you are half the other and your mother is the other half of you.’
  
  I finished this novel, wanting to reread it after I have read ‘The Tribe’ and ‘The Lebs’. This is not just a novel about a migrant experience, it is a novel that touches on difference and othering, on ‘Us’ and ‘Them’ but finishes with hope: ‘We’.
  
  Jennifer Cameron-Smith
  
• 
  Tracey

  I didn’t realise this was the third book in a trilogy, but it appeared to stand alone quite comfortably.
  
  I struggled the whole way through this one in terms of whether I wanted to keep reading it or not. I really enjoyed parts, and liked the energy of the writing. There are some great insights into the constant tension between conforming to cultural and family expectations and an individual’s happiness (not just for Bani, the main character, but other characters too) as well as the immigrant experience and how it shapes the generations that follow. And overall I felt sympathy for Bani’s predicament.
  
  However, i really disliked other parts. Bani thinks he is not racist but everyone, literally everyone, is described by him using a variety of slurs. Descriptions of characters rarely stray further than their race, religion and physical appearance. It’s unrelenting and you can see how much it gets in the way of him - and those around him - moving towards a greater acceptance of others. The three central female characters are ultimately two dimensional - there’s not much to them. Women either have ‘enormous’ breasts or they don’t. And as for a woman having ‘Keira Knightly legs … and Beyonce thighs’ - well, I just can’t see how that would even be possible! It just kept reinforcing Bani’s preoccupation with what he could see, and his lack of interest in getting to know anyone at a deeper level.
  
  Bani also lacks insight into his own reactions to frustrating and upsetting events. While he proudly claims he would never lay a hand on a woman or a child, he has a short fuse (as do all the central male characters in fact) and goes from calm to screaming and punching holes in walls with his fists or head in nanoseconds. I would have liked this book more if Bani had shown some growth as a human being along this journey, a recognition that you don’t have to repeat what you’ve been taught, that you can make a choice to behave differently (beyond the obvious choice he makes, of course).
• 
  Chantelle

  Marginally better than The Lebs, this once again feels self-indulgent and arrogant. Every single character beyond the narrator is so one-dimensional and poorly drawn, as though the author has no thought for anyone other than himself. It perpetuates stereotypes instead of trying to break them down, which is a shame.
• 
  Ngarie

  A lyrical writing style, yet the descriptions of people are raw, and honest, and on the verge of being uncomfortable. This reminds me greatly of one of my favourite authors, D. H. Lawrence.
  I really connect with this style of writing, and I find immense meaning in an honest and direct portrayal of a culture, of family, and of life. Particularly, because underlying it all in this story is the greatest respect for a life filled with love (in its many and varied forms), and being true to what's important to one's spirit/soul.
• 
  Natalia Figueroa Barroso

  The other half of you by Dr. Michael Mohammed Ahmad. @sweatshop.movement
  
  A well written novel is one that you don’t want to end. The closer you get to the last chapter, the slower you read. You begin to mourn the characters as if they were your loved ones entering the departure gates at the airport. Who knows how long it will be when you hold them close next?
  
  For me, Mohammed is one of Australia’s best writers and I believe that one of the reasons besides his actual intellectual brilliance (man there are so many literary references that via his books I’ve written a long to read list), I believe his novels are so encapsulating and alive because he writes what he knows, autobiographical fiction at its best.
  
  All of his characters are vivid and whole, they each evolve throughout the story, and I think Mohammed does this well because he literally loves his characters because his characters are in fact his life.
  
  THE OTHER HALF OF YOU is an important read, a love letter from Bani (the protagonist) to his son. It unravels what it means to be a Muslim Lebanese father from western Sydney in love with a White woman. It explores, class, race, love, fatherhood, manhood, family and so much more.
  Lyrically written, every sentence sings.
  
  I truly recommend you read all his novels, he really brings western Sydney to life. Plus, he plays with words and structure and man really just wow.
  
  For a full review please read the powerhouse @bysarahayoub review which you can find in her bio, or google it via this link:
  https://meanjin.com.au/blog/what-im-r...
• 
  ju

  I liked The Other Half of You, but not consistently.
  
  The book's main character, Bani Adam, isn't the book's most likeable. I instead took an instant liking to Sahara, and it’s the memories that surface between her and Bani that made me want to keep reading past all of Bani’s boxing and family shenanigans. As a Muslim who has lived in both the Glebe area and Western Sydney, the setting of the book felt familiar and warm-I loved being able to map out the story in my head, from Aladdin’s Kebabs to Victoria Park.
  
  Michael Mohammed Ahmad portrays love, tenderness and intimacy- both between lovers, and between father and son- so beautifully it made my heart burst.

  I told her I had a big broken nose. She said she didn't care about looks, so I asked her to meet me in person. "I'm not that pretty either," she warned. That was the first time I wanted to hold her.

  I enjoyed the letter-style, and the literary references (although which son wants to read graphic details about his father's sex life?). But the book's prose continues in this stark back-and-forth between poetic and crude and cartoonish, it's hard to discern who Bani is, really. Too many fleeting characters being introduced had me fighting the urge to skim-read. The book’s female characters, including Bani’s relatives, were only described in terms of their bodies, but I again can’t tell if this is Bani’s nature, or just poor writing.
  
  [SPOILERS] The pacing took a strange turn towards the last act. It's unclear why Bani had such a sudden and intense fascination with Oli, an acquaintance. Or how his father and family had come to accept her with seemingly no conflict. The fact that Oli ended up taking the shahada was just another choice that felt antithetical to the values that the rest of the book had spent building up. It's hard to believe that it's the fate an atheist white woman, who reads Greer and Butler, would choose.
  
  The ending made me feel sad, a little bit heartbroken, at the thought of Sahara being a lost lover. Layla and Majnun, apart after all.
• 
  The Bookshop Umina

  I loved this! Michael Mohammed Ahmad spoke at our local writers festival and was fabulous on the panel with Rawah Arja and I bought the book straight away to get it signed. I enjoyed the relationships in the book and the look into a family quite different from my own in many ways, but the love, the pressure of expectations and the wonderful little quirks were universal.
  Full of love, profanity and clash of cultures, this was a great read.
  Mandi
• 
  Deb Chapman

  I really enjoyed this book, it ticked all my boxes for what I look for in literature. It’s so well written and engaging, it reveals the inner life of a wonderful character so well drawn, it’s unexpected and written from first person young Muslim man perspective which put me into another world, yet set in western Sydney, oddly familiar in many places. It’s tender. A story with pathos and humour and love, a whole lotta love. Hopeful and ordinary and ‘strange’ in places. A great read and worthy of its miles franklin short listing
• 
  Kelly

  This was such a western Sydney story in the best way! The parts I loved the most were the beautiful, poetic ways Bani spoke about and to his son. I also think the author managed the tension well between first and second generations in migrant families - the pull to be both in the culture of the country you grew up in (Australia, in this case) while honouring and continuing the culture of your migrant parents, especially when there is an educational disparity. This book does not shy away from addressing racism in both obvious and subtle forms. I think it also addresses the complexity of the lives of characters who might come across as two-dimensional to others due to bravado. One thing I found difficult to read were the casual racist epithets used to describe both Lebanese and other migrant communities - most of the time being said by the main character. There is also a whole lot of swearing in this book so if that’s not your thing this may not be the book for you! Without giving too much away, I was also unhappy with the resolution for the character of Fatima. All in all this book was a compelling read and I enjoyed it.
• 
  Mohammed Morsi

  Mohammed's The Other Half of You, is a deep tender novel, with the search for belonging at the centre. But it is also a sharp knife stabbed at Australia's culture of white supremacy.
  Mohammed is an exceptional writer, in an Australian literary scene where the language and tone leaves little space for deviation. Michael's details - whether in a shop or a bedroom or at McDonalds - are told with confidence and calm, although the core of the narrative is the exact opposite.
  
• 
  Graham Matthews

  Two dimensional women
  
  This book is quite well written. The first half of the book is engaging and appears to develop a tragedy of belonging and aspiration. Albeit, the lead character (author?) carries a huge chip on his shoulder, which gets in the way of telling the story.
  By the middle of the book though, it tends to lose the plot.
  The women characters are all two-dimensional: foils for the central character’s journey of discovery. And the final lovematch, while cute and cuddly, came as a surprise; poorly prepared and undeveloped.
  I’m glad I read it, but I won’t rush to read any more books by the author.
• 
  Angelique Marie

  As a Westie from a multi-ethnic suburb, I relate to much of this novel- I read it in one obsessive sitting (I took a day off work to do so).
  
  The plotline engaged voraciously, the author's scathing lens is both provocative and evocative of hours spent in dismal low-socioeconomic Lakemba (I especially related to his desire to return 'home' after time spent in the yuppie inner-west).
  
  I did, however, find myself very unattached to the characters (which is unusual considering how absorbing the narrator's conflict and ghastly marriage is).
  
  While the characters are immigrant strugglers tainted with their own unshakable prejudice and traumas, they nonetheless subject Adem to a miserable and pathetic first marriage which could have been avoided by applying some insight and maturity to the situation. Even Adem himself is not someone I'd wish to know; his constant racial and religious (aka 'wood worshipping Maronites') profiling was a little off-putting.... but at the same time, a real-world feature of a collective, and provincial, psychology.
  
  Bar the main character, no one seems to learn anything or come into a space of self-actualisation; all characters remained attached to the premise that 'White= cultureless and 'not one of us'.
  
  There are a number of racist encounters (aka, 'the White girl' being demoralised by a woman in hijab strictly for being 'White' and existing in Lakemba / dating someone from the 'Tribe') that underscore why the community depicted remains interesting but not particularly empathetic or inviting.
  
  Someone needs to respond to this novel and compose a work from the perspective of a 'White' girl from the hood who was shamelessly harassed by occupants of the southwest... Damn it, where is this memoir?
• 
  Amanda Wise

  This book is a must read. I read 'The Lebs' and enjoyed it very much but this follow up is just incredible. It is subtle, beautiful and an authentic voice. I don't mean that in a patronising way. Ahmad's mastery of language is stunning - shifting from the Australian suburban vernacular of South-West Sydney 'Leb' community, to a transcendent voice that captures the in-betweenness at the intersections of class, ethnicity, race, gender, and religion - not in the static sense of 'additive categories' but the insights, hopes, and sometimes painful uncertainties shifting between these produce. He manages to capture at once a great love and respect and care for the protagonist's racialised and stigmatised Muslim 'Leb' community, at the same time as exressing a longing for something more - to be among people who 'get you' - where words and ideas are valued. At the same time, Ahmad is tuned sharply to the double speak, the blindness and hypocracies of 'well meaning White' lefties, intellectuals, academics, teachers and hipsters - as well as the hyprocracies of the 'pious'. The colour blind racisms, the micro-aggressions around dress, the 'wrong' university', the stifling fetishisation of difference. Ahmad also trains a sharp eye on questions of gender - on masculinities, and how the moral policing of gendered ideals likewise traps the various women in the protagonist's life. The resolution is perfect. Loved it. I'll recommend it to my students.
• 
  Greg

  Bani Adam is a member of "a minority of a minority of a minority"; an Alawite Shi'ite living in Sydney's Western suburbs. When Bani forms a liaison with a Christian girl, his father and his community condemn him, and insist that he choose a bride from within "the Tribe"; this is a rigid custom born of the fear that the Alawite minority might die out if not preserved.
  
  Bani enters upon a series of attempts at arranged marriages, and eventually chooses a bride, with disastrous results.
  
  Reading this book straight after Alice Pung's One Hundred Days was interesting; on the surface, they have so much in common. Both protagonists are first-generation children of strict and traditional immigrant parents. Both have a forbidden love affair. In both books the narrator is telling the story to their child. They even both cite the same verse from The Prophet. In Pung's novel though, there is a claustrophobia and tension that builds throughout, as Karuna tries to deal with her situation alone. In this book, Bani is surrounded by a community that he loves but needs to find some accommodation with to just be himself.
  
  This book was at times amusing and at times sobering. The Arab community in Sydney is portrayed in a loving and self-deprecatory fashion, and Bani uses racial epithets that they would commonly use amongst themselves, but may be offensive to some readers.
• 
  Phillip

  Big hearted, stirring and absorbing.
• 
  The Honest Book Reviewer

  This continues my journey with reading the long-listed books for the Miles Franklin Literary Award.
  I didn't realise this was the final book of a trilogy, but it held up on it's own merits and I don't think I needed to read the first two books.
  
  There is a lot to like about this book. It provides a glimpse into a life that I've never witnessed, and for that it should be applauded. It does it in an authentic way, although it is quite melodramatic and, at times, I found the melodrama too much. I did like how the author presented Bali's family - it did feel real enough. I felt engaged enough with their lives to enjoy this story, and for the most part I did fing Bali an engaging character.
  
  What I thought was lacking was balance. Bali was obsessed with Sahara at the start of this book, but Saraha simply vanishes. I thought it strange the tendencies for the main character to have racist thoughts about other people, and at the same time shout about how he was being racially profiled. That was an odd thing in this story. I also thought that Bucky, Bali's good friend, could have been more carefully folded into this story more. He was always at the edges, as if Bali was never ready to include Bucky fully in his life.
  
  I did feel the struggle of Bali as he dealt with his family and the extended community. All his pain felt real, and the author did a good job in showing those struggles. Yet, towards the end of the novel, everything seemed to rush ahead quite fast, and while I liked the conclusion, I thought it deserved something more.
  
  Lastly, if this is meant to be a letter to his son, I'm not sure that including graphic details about his sex life with the women of his life was something that should be included.
• 
  Rita Ma

  As usual there is a real « swell » to this author’s writing, but as Bani Adam ages, the swell of emotion and reward increases. The middle part of this book felt like a struggle as the protagonist was struggling and lost. The pay off at the end is there. I love his writing, especially how he uses both form and content of his writing to convey meaning. I liked the rhetorical device of this being a poetic novel to his son, named after Khalil Gibran. But I also wondered why a long letter to his son would include such explicit details about his sex life. This interrupted the suspension of belief for me. This book doesn’t hide anything, including racialised misogyny within Arab and Australian culture, corruption and hypocrisy within religious communities. The question for me is whether it provides fully formed female characters beyond being thr subjects of his desire/non desire. There was no dialogue between women in this book at all. I would like to see this author write more, but on different stories now. He brings a powerful voice but now I want to see it dance more freely and see what it can do in other subject areas, with more fully formed female characters if he wants to keep his female readers.