When We Were Sisters by Fatimah Asghar

When We Were Sisters Reviews

• 
  Roxane

  This is an exquisitely lyrical novel. I loved the fragmentary nature of the prose, the poems as interstitials, the bond between these three sisters—Noreen, Aisha, and Kausur, as a character unto itself. The story made my heart ache--three girls, orphaned and left in the care of a neglectful uncle who does the bare minimum for the girls. Kausur is the narrator and as the youngest, we see how for so long, her sisters are her whole world, the sun and the moon. We also see how she folds in on herself more and more as she tries to make sense of the world and her place in it. I was incredibly moved by this book and impressed by the author's stylistic choices. Very original storytelling here.
• 
  Lark Benobi

  The style is deliberately fragmentary but I’m afraid for me the fragments never coalesced. On the whole this was a frustrating read for me where I felt as if the author had a much clearer intention than what ultimately made it to the page.
• 
  Jodi

  This book absolutely gutted me. The majority of it was impossibly sad.
  
  Growing up, I had a fairly sheltered life, which may be why I can’t envision—even in my wildest imaginings—such appalling abuse and the most outrageous neglect. Three beautiful little girls, their mother long dead, their father now murdered. Three young orphans no one wants.
  
  In the end, an uncle takes over their care, but only because he knows he can get hold of their father’s money and the monthly government cheques. But care for them he does NOT. He buys a tiny apartment, puts them in one room, and rents out the others. Then he continually forgets them. He forgets they have no food; no money. They have only each other. They understand now there’s no one but each other. But they’re children. We watch as they grow up, and wonder how this can possibly end well?
  
  The author may have written the book as therapy. In the Acknowledgements she writes:

  I started this book in isolation, when the sadness was so unbearable I couldn’t remember who I was. I started writing it in secret, letting what came come. I didn’t know where it was taking me. I didn’t know what it was. I let it come.

  Without a doubt, the author writes very beautifully. But her sadness permeates every page and there are just too many triggers. In a strange way, I am glad I read it, but I don’t know if I can recommend it with any confidence. Yes, I gave it 5 stars… because it made me feel so much and so deeply, and it opened my eyes to so much. Too much, though, was unspeakably ugly.
  
  5 “Impossibly Sad” stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
• 
  Kathleen

  National Book for Fiction Longlist 2022. The parents of sisters Noreen, Aisha, and Kausar were immigrants from Pakistan. The mother died years ago, and the father was murdered when Noreen, the oldest, was just 9-years-old. The orphans are taken in by their mother’s brother. It quickly becomes apparent that their uncle has taken custody for the cash the government pays him to care for the sisters. He rules them with authoritarian neglect that breaks one’s heart. All the sisters have is each other. Asghar tells the story through the POV of Kausar, the youngest sister.
  
  Asghar is also a poet and her sentences often reflect the short, lyrical phrases of poetry as she explores the conflict the sisters have between American culture and their relatives’ Pakistani backgrounds.
  
• 
  nastya ♡

  when their father is shot and killed, noreen, aisha, and kausar are taken in to be fostered by their uncle. he has strange rules and swindles people at the masjid out of money that he says will go to taking care of the orphans. in truth, he forgets to feed them. kausar, exploring their nonbinary identity, has to pretend to be a girl at school and is the subject of cruel bullies. this is the story of three sisters and how they survived.
  
  beautifully written, i was most struck by the poetry in this novel. it is clear that asghar has studied poetry and she writes it beautifully, yet with kausar’s voice. it’s a rollercoaster of laughter and tears. these girls are everything to each other and rely on one another. as an only child, i can not fathom that type of closeness and love.
• 
  Elizabeth☮

  This is the story of three sisters that suffer the loss of both parents and are taken in by an uncle living in America. The girls live in Pakistan at the time of their father's death. The uncle, never named, lures the narrator, Kausur, to accept his offer to take them in with the promise of a zoo. What the girls find when they arrive in America is an aparment building filled with bird cages and rabbits and noise and scat.
  
  Fausur offers a window into the lives of themself and their sisters. The uncle is absent for the most part. He uses intimidation and fear to keep the girls quiet about their situation. It is tough to read.
  
  Asghar is a poet and while I've never read her poetry, I imagine it must be powerful. The book is written in paragraphs that make each word count. I think this is an honest depiction of what it feels like to be tethered to someone that provides yet repels; that promises the world, but delivers something quite different.
  
  Thanks to EI for bringing this one up to the top of my TBR pile!
• 
  Sheena

  Three orphaned sisters are left to raise each other. The story follows their intense bond and how they are inseparable as they are all they have. Noreen, Aisha, and Kausar deal with their problems in their own way, struggling together but also on their own. It follows them as children and into adulthood - showing how everything has affected them. They went through so much abuse, neglect, loss, and sexual assault. It is told from Kausar’s perspective and we see how she navigates her feelings on gender, family, religion, and trying to find a place for herself in the world.
  
  This novel’s lyrical prose was beautiful and I liked that it didn’t stick to one format as well. The story itself is heartbreaking and left me feeling empty at the end. I loved it but wish the ending had a little bit more to it. I do feel that Kausar’s story was unfinished and may stay up tonight thinking about her.
  
  Thank you to Netgalley for an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. This comes out tomorrow and I'm so excited that I finished it just in time!
  
  
• 
  Samantha

  Well, it's my favorite sub-sub genre, poets writing prose, so it's unlikely I wasn't going to love this. I've followed Fatimah Asghar for a long time, and it's been awesome to see all the media they create for and by brown girls. I've been super excited for their first novel, about three Muslim sisters charting their paths after being orphaned, and it didn't disappoint. Asghar lists Justin Torres's book,
  We the Animals, as an inspiration for this one, and it's easy to see parallels, of siblings left with nothing but their bonds with each other. Chronological, lyrical, and told in vignettes, it's an extremely quick, readable, emotional book about survival, gender, and finding your own way after being untethered from stability and home.
• 
  Rachel

  "In this world we were born into nothing but everything is ours: the sidewalk, the yellow markers in the road. The rain falls through the leaves and kisses us just so. What no one will ever understand is that the world belongs to orphans, everything becomes our mother."
  
  This novel is breathtaking. The prose is gorgeous and the story heart-wrenching but beautiful. I couldn't put this book down. One of my favorite debuts of 2022.
• 
  NILTON TEIXEIRA

  This is supposed to be a remarkable story about sisterhood, trauma, and grief.
  I had this book in the waiting list for a long time.
  The audiobook became available from the library 2 weeks ago, but I was waiting for a copy of the ebook and a paperback.
  As I was anxious, for the first time I listened to the audiobook without having a hard copy in my hands.
  I played the first 30% and I immediately thought that this book was not for me, or perhaps the audiobook was the problem, so I downloaded a sample that contained about the first 8%. Later the ebook was available through the “skip the line” option from my library.
  And the truth is that reading the words was a better experience for me.
  But unfortunately the writing style is not for me, so I feel that it would be unfair of me to rate this book.
  I read all pages and I just couldn’t connect with anything.
  
  e-book (Kobo): 166 pages (default), 45k words
  
  audiobook narrated by Farah Kidwai, Kamran Khan and Deepti Gupta
  
• 
  Emily Coffee and Commentary

  A devastating novel of sisterhood and the lifelong effects of loss and grief. Nuanced and delicate, When We Were Sisters explores the ways in which we are forced to grow up overnight, the ways that we must care for ourselves and for others, the little ways in which we gives ourselves away, so much so that it is difficult to form a full picture of all that could have been, might still be. Raw, insightful, and unflinching in its lyrical honesty, this novel is such a vital portrait of heartbreak and emptiness; sometimes it is the loss of something we have not fully grasped that is the most impactful; the ache of love and regret is imprinted from even our earliest memories. A powerfully crafted debut that celebrates the ever changing but indestructible ties of sisterhood.
• 
  Josia Klein

  Oh how I loved this book. I saved reading the last section for a few days because I didn’t want it to end. Asgar’s writing is so lyrical and beautiful. I am not an orphan or a Muslim and I have no sisters; yet so many of the descriptions of girlhood and relationships and loneliness hit me right in the chest.
  
  I loved the experimental pieces — the use of brackets, the apartment map, fading text, the uncle’s name redacted.
  
  My heart broke and I raged at the neglectful, abusive uncle, at three girls forced into caretaking and adulthood far too young. And yet even he isn’t painted as fully evil, fully bad; Asgar adds such nuance and complexity into his relationship with his nieces. The loss of Meemoo and aunty and the perspectives from the girls’ parents were both gut punches. And the pain of change — Noreen going to college, people coming and going, things never quite being as they were.
  
  I also so appreciated the school chapters — feeling Kausar’s loneliness and struggles to belong. How early they knew that they were neither/both a girl and a boy. The agony of having a crush and things moving fast and being undefined and ending in heartbreak.
  
  But for all the emotional distress, the book also made me laugh! Asgar perfectly captures the essence of an inexplicably funny moment.
  
  This book for me immediately goes in a league with Little Women and Pride and Prejudice of painting the sisterly bond so wholly and dimensionally that it feels real and accessible for those of us without sisters.
  
  The ending felt abrupt and yet appropriate— I so wanted to know more about Kausar’s life in the interim years, about their estrangement from their family. But at the same time, it feels so apt to have only a peek into that era of their life, like the way relationships have errors of intimacy and separation. The reunion of the sisters, in such a suitable setting of Uncle’s funeral, gave me closure with a simple block of text: “Sister. Sister. Sister. Sister. Sister.” Before, fading into nothing; now, reappearing and becoming more solid with every recitation.
• 
  Kenzie

  3.5/5
  This is such a heartbreaking and beautiful story. The writing is gorgeous and it flows just like poetry. Fatimah Asghar is a great writer.
  
  This story is about 3 sisters after the death of their parents. They go to live with their unnamed uncle. It follows them as they start to grow up and want to make their own way into the world. A beautiful story about love and family. It does talk about heavy topics, so please check trigger warnings.
  
  *thank you netgalley for the arc!
• 
  Darryl Suite

  This should’ve made the National Book Awards shortlist. Beautifully told story. The prose is delicious. It made me feel so many things.
  
• 
  Rachel

  When We Were Sisters is a lyrical novel about the nature of grief as it reverberates through the life of Kausar and her sisters. It's a story of the abuse they survive when their unnamed uncle becomes their guardian after the deaths of their parents. In these beautiful and wildly experimental pages, Fatimah Asghar weaves a story that is part collage and part lyric and all gorgeous.
  
  Though at times I wanted a little more heft -- at times the shifts in form and perspective seem to elide a deeper investigation of the story and characters -- overall this is a gorgeous debut novel and I cannot wait to read whatever Asghar writes next.
  
  Thank you to One World and NetGalley for a free review copy in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.
• 
  Kayla Schenck

  This was a beautiful yet tearjerker of a story.
  
  This story is about three sisters following the death of their parents, they go to live with their uncle "redacted". The story follows them as they grow up and try to become who they wish to be while facing many battles including racism following 9/11.
• 
  Ally Ang

  A gorgeously written, emotionally devastating novel exploring the bond of three sisters coming of age in the wake of their parents’ deaths. I’m such a sucker for prose written by poets. Each sentence is so lush and lyrical. I found the main character’s journey with their gender particularly touching and resonant.
• 
  Sameer Vasta

  My brother is almost eight years younger than me.
  
  Growing up, we marked our trailposts in life together, no matter how different they were. He was in kindergarten when I became a teenager. When I left home, he was just beginning to find his independence as a precocious nine-year-old. He entered high school as I was completing my undergrad degree, and he started university when I was already starting the second job of my post-college career.
  
  Though the moments in life were different, we went through them together—sometimes far apart from each other, but still together in spirit. He was my confidant, my advice-giver, my sparring partner, and my dear friend.
  
  Nowadays, as adults, the markers of life blur a little bit more. The moments are less seminal, more part of the unending travels of adulthood. Still, he remains one of my closest friends, in addition to being a wonderful brother to me and an incredible uncle to my daughter. Just as we did as children, we share with each other, we trust each other, we occasionally disagree with each other, and we look out for one another. I am lucky to know him; I am lucky to have him in my family, in my life.
  
  Unlike the protagonists of Fatimah Asghar’s When We Were Sisters, my brother and I led wonderful childhoods where we loved and cherished and cared for deeply. What we did share with the protagonists, however, was a deep sibling bond that transcended age and place and circumstance.
  
  Ms. Asghar’s novel is an exploration of that sibling bond, of a connection that invigorates, rejuvenates, infuriates, protects, and loves. It is a story about growing up with someone who will build a inner world with you no matter what the world outside looks like. It is about finding safety in those we love, and about doing what we can to make those we love feel safe as well.
  
  I thought of my brother often as I read Ms. Asghar’s lyrical prose: the way she crafts sentences is strong and gentle at the same time, attributes I see in my younger sibling as he wavers from stubbornness about his chosen career path, and softness in the way he cares for our aging grandmother every day.
  
  The life of my brother and I could not be any more different than those of the main characters in When We Were Sisters, but the sisters share something my brother and I share as well: a recognition that no matter what the circumstance, we can lean on each other to persevere, to grow, and to thrive. This is a gift I do not, and will never, take for granted.
• 
  akacya ❦

  Disclaimer: I received a complimentary review copy from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This did not affect my rating.
  
  Content warnings: parent death, child abuse, sexual assault, racism, Islamophobia
  
  An orphan grapples with gender, family, and identity in this coming-of-age novel. Kausar is orphaned at a young age, and she and her two older sisters are now “taken care of” by their uncle. But they soon realize they only have each other and must look after themselves.
  
  The way this book was told was so unique. It seemed fragmented at times, which was so fitting for Kausar’s journey. The writing was so beautiful and I felt like I was reading poetry the whole time (without all the symbolism that can sometimes be confusing). I’ll definitely be on the lookout for more by this author and I recommend this book to anyone who’s okay with the content.
• 
  Nuha

  Thanks to One World and NetGalley for the Advanced Reader's Copy!
  
  Available Oct 18.
  
  Don't read this book unless you are utterly willing to have your heart stomped on. It is absolutely beautiful, moving tribute to the power of sisterhood and the many ways it saves us and the many ways it cuts our soul. When three sisters become orphans, they are forced to rely on each other like never before. Told in lyrical prose from the youngest sister's perspective, this unique coming of age is mired in violence, sexual, physical and emotional. It is dark and gritty, but there is a tenderness to the voice, a yearning, a romantic. Just an incredible mastery of the written word and the heart.
• 
  Cathryn Conroy

  This is a brilliant novel written in fierce prose that sings like lyrical poetry. It is heartbreaking, shattering, and overwhelming.
  
  Written by Fatimah Ashgar, this is the story of three Pakistani-American sisters, who are orphaned at a young age after their father is murdered and are sent to live with their only living relative, an uncle in New Jersey they have never before met. Divorced from his White wife who is living in a big suburban house with their three sons, the uncle only agrees to take the girls—Noreen, Aisha, and Kausar—for two reasons: Money and religion. He will not only get monthly government checks for their support, but also their father's money. In addition, Muslims believe that taking care of orphans is a straight ticket to paradise. While his sons attend private school, the orphan girls are mired in poverty. Clearly, the money isn't going to support them.
  
  Noreen, who is mature beyond her years, is pretty and smart. Aisha is confident but also angry and hostile. Kausar is the baby, who is devoted to her sisters but also filled with an anger that is so hot she describes it as a scorpion stinger. Kausar is questioning her gender identity, adding a new layer of confusion and angst to an already confused and angst-filled life.
  
  The story is told in the first person by Kausar, who is only five when her father is killed. (Kausar is 27 when the book ends.) She has no memory of her mother. She carries her abiding grief throughout her life, as it touches everything she does. The uncle houses the girls in a shoddy, filthy apartment and pretty much leaves them alone. They have no supervision and regularly run out of food and money. Except for school, they are told to stay inside. The sisters take care of each other, surviving—even while arguing, as sisters do—as best they can.
  
  This is a story about the meaning of family and the heartbreaking quest for mother love. It is about the unbreakable bonds of sisterhood, of love and arguments, of staying together and leaving each other, of surviving neglect.
  
  It is a thoughtful but emotionally devastating and inherently sad novel.
  
• 
  Leah Rachel von Essen

  When their father dies, all the three sisters have is each other. Taken in by their neglectful uncle, they're left to support one another: the eldest Noreen, middle child Aisha, and our narrator, Kausar. When We Were Sisters by Fatimah Asghar tells the story of their struggle to finding a place where they can be okay, their growing up in this chaotic world of feeling unwanted, their need for love and their struggle under a combination of harsh rules and neglect.
  
  I ended up finishing When We Were Sisters in one, insomnia-fueled read. Poetic and rich with love, this book is an incredible tale of siblinghood and trauma. As Kausar grows up, she confronts gender dysphoria and sexuality, while watching her sisters pull away; she confronts the inner rage she's always harbored under layers of wanting to forgive and be loved; she faces the difficulties of growing up as a Muslim American girl. This book has so much heart, and it transfers through the pages—you feel all the complicated ups and downs of loneliness, love, and pain in the pit of your stomach thanks to Asghar's excellent writing.
  
  Content warnings for family death, misogyny, emotional abuse and neglect, Islamophobia, sexual assault, body/gender dysphoria.
• 
  Laura

  i really, really wanted to love this book but mostly it just made me sad and not rush back to reading it when i put it down, because it was so unrelenting sad.
  
  Three sisters are orphaned and move in with their striving and inattentive uncle, while struggling with forced maturity, religion and love alone in a 1 bedroom apartment.
  
  I struggled with the style- the cross out and omitted names and poetry chapters where i wasnt sure who was speaking made it hard for me to connect. Maybe that was intentional because of how isolated the narrator felt throughout the story, but as reader deserpately wanting to connect, it kept me at arms length.
  
  Thanks net galley for letting me read and review this book. #netgalley
• 
  Israa

  Thank you NetGalley for an advanced copy. I started out enjoying the story, but the plot and progression of abuse continued to get worse and worse for me. The writing style is wonderful, mixing poetry and points of view to build the emotions and fill in background information. There is profanity, sexually explicit scenes, and LGBTQ content that I was not expecting, either. The ending is not tragic, but it also does not feel fulfilling. Ultimately, I cannot recommend this book, not even for those suffering from neglect, abuse, or sexual assault, since it will be more disturbing than helpful.
• 
  Elizabeth A

  I think I might have found a new fave genre - poets who write prose.
  
  This is the story of three young girls, suddenly orphaned, and raised by a neglectful (if one is being generous) Uncle. Our narrator is the youngest of the sisters, and the story unfolds in vignettes. The writing is lyrical, the inner and outer worlds fully realized, the trauma and bond between the sister palpable. Loved it.
• 
  Mal N

  it feels like a mythology and also so homey! Incredible!
• 
  Sasha Greer

  I really wanted to love it… but the prose is too poetic and shrouds meaning
• 
  Ricki Brodie

  You could definitely tell this was written by a poet writing from her soul. The story revolves around three orphans, the oldest nine at the time, whose uncle provided the most meager room and board while using their inheritance and government checks to keep his ex-wife and children in luxury. The youngest sister, the main narrator, describes their interactions and lives both relying on each other and yet feeling so alone that she often disassociated.
  
  The lyricism of the writing made me understand and feel the depth of the characters’ pain, grief, loneliness and stagnation. Issues of abandonment, not having enough to eat, not understanding their body created an anger and sadness that had to be controlled. By creating short sections, I was not pulled into a vortex of pain so deep that I could not put this book down. I read it in one sitting. Be sure to read the acknowledgements.
• 
  dovesnook

  I’m so so so so happy I read this. Like many other of my five star reads, I don’t know what to say about this one either. I don’t have the words to describe the story because it speaks for itself in a better way than I could. Definitely check TWs and CWs if you want to pick it up though.