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    American Heart
    American Heart
    American Heart
    Audiobook11 hours

    American Heart

    Written by Laura Moriarty

    Narrated by Luci Christian Bell

    2.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    A powerful and thought-provoking YA debut from New York Times bestselling author Laura Moriarty.

    Imagine a United States in which registries and detainment camps for Muslim-Americans are a reality.

    Fifteen-year-old Sarah-Mary Williams of Hannibal, Missouri, lives in this world, and though she has strong opinions on almost everything, she isn’t concerned with the internments because she doesn’t know any Muslims. She assumes that everything she reads and sees in the news is true, and that these plans are better for everyone’s safety.

    But when she happens upon Sadaf, a Muslim fugitive determined to reach freedom in Canada, Sarah-Mary at first believes she must turn her in. But Sadaf challenges Sarah-Mary’s perceptions of right and wrong, and instead Sarah-Mary decides, with growing conviction, to do all she can to help Sadaf escape.

    The two set off on a desperate journey, hitchhiking through the heart of an America that is at times courageous and kind, but always full of tension and danger for anyone deemed suspicious.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateJan 30, 2018
    ISBN9780062821775
    Author

    Laura Moriarty

    Laura Moriarty is the New York Times bestselling author of The Chaperone, as well as The Rest of Her Life, While I’m Falling, The Center of Everything, and American Heart. She received her degree in social work before returning for her MA in creative writing at the University of Kansas, and she was the recipient of the George Bennett Fellowship for Creative Writing at Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire. She currently lives in Lawrence, Kansas, where she is a professor of creative writing at the University of Kansas. Visit her online at www.lauramoriarty.net.

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    Reviews for American Heart

    2.5/5

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    • 1/5
      I read it because I, as a librarian and a writer, was troubled by the noisy and hostile reaction to it. I still am, and the number of "reviewers" here who have slapped 1 or 5 star ratings on it while proudly proclaiming that they have not read it and don't intend to appall me.

      So yes, I read it. And will confine my observations to the conclusion that its main weaknesses are writerly and not political/social. A political/social statement, even with good intentions, doesn't make for good writing. Hard as Moriarty tries to inject complexity into characters (the rhinestone cowgirl in an obscenely expensive sports care plastered with anti-Muslim hate stickers who also makes quilts out of dead people's clothes as mementoes for grieving families, for one), they feel contrived and forced, to Make A Point. Other reviewers have trashed her "world-building" as lacking in detail or consistency; I will defend it to the extent that it does suggest the insidiousness of where our xenophobia could be leading us. Some reviewers admired and connected with Sarah-Mary, while others have called her a "horrible, horrible person." I found her reasonably acceptable as a product of her environment.

      BUT... for all the good intentions in the world, the utter passivity of Sadaf, an adult, highly-educated woman, placing her life entirely in the hands of a random teenager just passes my ability to suspend disbelief. She weeps, she suffers, she shuts up and does whatever Sarah-Mary tells her. I kept waiting for her to come to life, to take some control, and she never does. There are clumsy, endless info-dump conversations solely for the purpose of explaining Islam to the uninformed. I understand that Moriarty did seek the input of several Muslims on her manuscript, so perhaps the content of those conversations was technically accurate, but Sadaf still seems to serve as a cardboard-cut-out Muslim and not a fully-realized, believable person of her faith and culture. Moriarty tries too hard to fit it all in there: black people, check; Jews, check; gays, check (she even gets two-fer on that one); rednecks with guns, check.

      And the plot... sigh. The never-ending breathless sequence of perils from which our plucky heroine always manages to escape seems to be a required trope of YA fiction, and quickly gets tiresome. And [spoiler, and I don't even care] the great last-second, miraculous moonlight rescue by the best friend from hundreds of miles away? Please.

      Are readers justified in hating on this book? Sure, if that's how they feel - AND if they've read it. Do I think Moriarty should not have written thisbook? Absolutely not - she (and any other writer) can and should write anything she wants, and people can read it or not as they choose. I just wish she'd written a better one.

      1 person found this helpful