Rating: 
Summary: A real treat to read
Review: Mr. Buchan's knowledge of Persian culture and literature shines through "word by word, meaning by meaning," in this enchanting novel. This is by no means an easy book to read, neither in terms of the writing style, nor in terms of its content. The writing style is beautifully complex and poetic, mysterious. One has to really savor the passages. I wanted to read some of the sections over and over again because they are written so beautifully. In terms of the story, although it is fiction, the context is very real and conceivable. The trials that John Pitt goes through to become reunited with his wife, are not far from the truth of what real people have gone through in that corner of the world. Sections of the story can be sad, but still this book is a real pleasure to read; a tender love story to remember for a long time, with a refreshing writing style, definitely outside of the ordinary!
Rating:
Summary: A real treat to read
Review: Mr. Buchan's knowledge of Persian culture and literature shines through, "word by word, meaning by meaning," in this enchanting novel. This is by no means an easy book to read, neither in terms of the writing style, nor in terms of its content. The writing style is beautifully complex and poetic, mysterious. One has to really savor the passages. I wanted to read some of the sections over and over again, just because they are written so beautifully. In terms of the story, although it is fiction, the context is very real and very conceivable. The trials that John Pitts goes through to become reunited with his wife are not far from the truth of what real people have gone through in that corner of the world. Sections of the story can be very sad, but still the book is a real pleasure to read; a tender love story to remember for a long time, with a refreshing writing style, definitely outside of the ordinary!
Rating:
Summary: A real treat to read
Review: Mr. Buchan's knowledge of Persian culture and literature shines through, "word by word, meaning by meaning," in this enchanting novel. This is by no means an easy book to read, neither in terms of the writing style, nor in terms of its content. The writing style is beautifully complex and poetic, mysterious. One has to really savor the passages. I wanted to read some of the sections over and over again, just because they are written so beautifully. In terms of the story, although it is fiction, the context is very real and very conceivable. The trials that John Pitts goes through to become reunited with his wife are not far from the truth of what real people have gone through in that corner of the world. Sections of the story can be very sad, but still the book is a real pleasure to read; a tender love story to remember for a long time, with a refreshing writing style, definitely outside of the ordinary!
Rating: 
Summary: Could Have Been a Great One
Review: Of all the places on the earth, I can't think of a more "foreign" place in the world to Westerners than Iran. Everything is different: the food, the architecture, the alphabet, the clothing, the language. Women can't go in public without a veil; all men and women pray submissively, facing the east; and the government is controlled by religious fanatics. And the history of the place goes back to the beginning of civilization. How fortunate then, that we come upon this novel, which purports to give us a glimpse of this society through the eyes of one of our own: an Englishman, at eighteen, who moves there in 1974 and stays there for good. And how unfortunate that this narrative is so clumsy, and so frustratingly difficult to understand. It is narrated in the first person by John Pitt, a young man who leaves England simply because he doesn't wish to be like everybody else, with their girlfriends and their music. He ends up in Isfahan, Iran, where he is able to get a job teaching English to high-school age girls. He falls in love with one of them; the Persian Bride of the title. It is the sort of life-defining, all-encompassing love that most of us have had only once in our lives, and some of us never at all. He elopes with her, and for about a year, they enjoy a somewhat idyllic honeymoon. But it is an ill fated love: she is the daughter of a prominent member of the Shah's regime. Their relationship is problematic enough initially, but after the takeover of the Ayatollahs it becomes impossible. She is taken from him and he is imprisoned, first by the Shah and then by the new regime. After many years he is given a chance to redeem himself by fighting for the Iranians against the Iraquis, and he does. He finally escapes from Iran, and spends the rest of the novel traveling through southwest Islamic Asia, searching for his love. It is a compelling story. Mr. Buchan clearly knows his subject matter and is competent enough to draw believable if somewhat imperfect characters. The love story is also very powerful: the actions of both his narrator and his bride make this clear. But for some reason, either intentionally or unintentionally, the author has created a complex puzzlebox of a narrative that is extremely difficult to understand. I can't tell you how many times I found myself riffling back several pages in order to figure out what I missed. A telling example is this: the narrator and his bride are travelling in a jeep, right after their elopement, on a sandy path in the desert night. She gets out of the truck and asks him to follow her. He does. About a dozen sentences later, he turns off the engine. Huh? Oh, he was following her in the jeep. I get it, but why doesn't he say so in the first place? His first meeting with her family is incomprehensible. There are several characters present: the father, a colonel in the air force; the mother, who may or may not also be the princess; the bearded liaison, who is also a servant, I think; and two daughters. A further complication is that much of their dialogue is spoken in untranslated French. I read this passage several times and have still not figured out who is who. He is separated from his wife while both are trying to escape Iran with the help of two drug smugglers. It is implied that the drug smugglers attempted to kill them both, but we are never really told in a straightforward manner. All we know is that the narrator ends up in prison, and that he doesn't know what happened to the girl. But he was there! Why doesn't he tell us what he knows? Why is this episode shrouded in mystery? Clearly, this omission is intentional. Is it an attempt to blanket the reader with the same confusion as the narrator? Maybe, but again, why? The book is filled with these confusing incongruities, small and large. Towards the end, he is lying in a filthy hovel in Kabul, dressed in rags, drunk, and unbathed. A well-dressed female French physician he has never met comes to see him. "Do you want to make love to me?" she asks. Huh? Then he meets his nemesis, the afore-mentioned drug smuggler. I think the drug smuggler dies. I know the narrator loses his arm. But how? Again, why doesn't he just say what happened? Islamic philosophy is strewn liberally throughout the novel. One of the tenets of it seems to be that we poor humans are not meant to know everything, and that we must submissively accept that which is beyond our understanding. Perhaps this is what the author is trying to convey. Perhaps. But, unfortunately, it is not going to be conveyed to the average reader, who after a hundred pages or so will angrily heave the book against the wall, never to pick it up again. I don't regret reading this book. I feel like I learned a little something of Iran before and after the revolution, and I was touched by the enduring love story. But I'll never read it again. It is a book, sadly, that is destined for obscurity; a ninety-nine cent special in the library basement.
Rating:
Summary: Beautifully written, but also confounding
Review: Perhaps my disappointment with the 'Persian Bride' is that it is not what I expected from the publicity blurbs--"a classy thriller." Classy it is; thriller it is not. I wonder, too, if James Buchan might be a better writer than he is a story teller. I was frequently frustrated in my efforts to follow the story line. At times, I found myself reading and re-reading passages in an an attempt to understand what is going on or why a character is responding the way he is ("Whoa! Did I miss something?"). This may well be what Buchan intended, since cross-cultural miscommunication and misunderstandings are frequent themes here, but I'm not sure I'd be any happier knowing that the technique is purposeful. On the other hand, Buchan writes beautifully and respectifully of the manners of a society that is "under the veil" and whose people speak a poetic language in which words have layers of meaning. We believe in John Pitt's infatuation with his Persian bride and even understand the curious (to Westerners) intimacy that can develop between two strangers -- the intense feelings of love, loyalty and duty that promise to deepen as they come to know and understand each other. I see no justification for some reviewers' accusations that Buchan is bashing Islam. And it is absolutely ridiculous to dismiss this book because the tiny bit of leg on cover may not accurately portray Persian dress.
Rating: 
Summary: Walking into a dream
Review: Reading this novel was like walking into a beautiful dream which descends into a nightmare and recovers the dream again at the very end. I don't understand the problems that some people had with it. The plot is a little murky but no more confusing that a host of other books I've read and less so than some. For me the indistinctness of it contributed to It's dream like quality. The writing, especially describing the exotic locations is exquisite and I feel like I've visited all of them. Perhaps its not for the very straightforward plot oriented but for me it was unforgettable.
Rating: 
Summary: Culturally inaccurate
Review: Some books demand you set them down and return to them later, for they are too rich to be read in one stretch (e.g., William Gaddis' _The Recognitions_, Blaise Cendrars' memoir tetralogy). Others, like Buchan's book, will not let you go. Each page requires the next page be read immediately. This is not to say _The Persian Bride_ is a thriller, nor do I agree that it is an epic. It is, instead, a romance written without sentimentality. I can't imagine the narrator, as he appears at the chronological beginning of the story, ever engaging the sympathies of any reader. He is set up to be toppled, by love in the person of Shirin. As readers we are as eager to see the collapse of the conceited John Pitt and his subsequent self-renovation as to read of their escape and married life together, and what follows their insulated existence. The prose, because of the weight of thought behind it (from the characters, not from the author), contains more than what is said, but what is not immediately apparent is expansive. Histories and civilizations, as well as lives, lie under every line, and as Pitt topples so does the iran of the Shah. Someone has said the dialogue is convincing. While I've not been to any of the countries visited in the narrative, the feelings and the toughmindedness of Shirin remind me of many persian friends. The machinations of those in power, those who used to be, and those who want to be are complex and real. The gradual enlightenment of the narrator rings true. Gradually the novel becomes diffuse as the narrator's grip on himself (it can be argued he never had more than an occasional grip on events) loosens. One can argue that as this occurs the dramatic aspect of the work decreases. Yet what takes its place is perfectly in keeping with the narrator's growth. His journeys through and travails in the middle east, or cental asia, or west asia, depending on the perspective, mirrors his disintegrating self-centredness while revealing the book to be, in some respects, a quest novel. The end, with which some are dissatisfied, falls into the tradition of Dante seeing Beatrice in Paradiso. Its reality is in question, and probably a few readers would like to know if what is presented is what happens. That is immaterial to the novel, for thematically Buchan writes of a type of grace which many will feel to be truthful, if not in fact than in their bones, blood and soul, and which perfectly closes the book. _The Persian Bride_ is a rich, emotionally engaging and significant novel, an evocative, spiritual odyssey, for which Buchan must be given high praise.
Rating:
Summary: Poetic, hard-edged and timely
Review: Some books demand you set them down and return to them later, for they are too rich to be read in one stretch (e.g., William Gaddis' _The Recognitions_, Blaise Cendrars' memoir tetralogy). Others, like Buchan's book, will not let you go. Each page requires the next page be read immediately. This is not to say _The Persian Bride_ is a thriller, nor do I agree that it is an epic. It is, instead, a romance written without sentimentality. I can't imagine the narrator, as he appears at the chronological beginning of the story, ever engaging the sympathies of any reader. He is set up to be toppled, by love in the person of Shirin. As readers we are as eager to see the collapse of the conceited John Pitt and his subsequent self-renovation as to read of their escape and married life together, and what follows their insulated existence. The prose, because of the weight of thought behind it (from the characters, not from the author), contains more than what is said, but what is not immediately apparent is expansive. Histories and civilizations, as well as lives, lie under every line, and as Pitt topples so does the iran of the Shah. Someone has said the dialogue is convincing. While I've not been to any of the countries visited in the narrative, the feelings and the toughmindedness of Shirin remind me of many persian friends. The machinations of those in power, those who used to be, and those who want to be are complex and real. The gradual enlightenment of the narrator rings true. Gradually the novel becomes diffuse as the narrator's grip on himself (it can be argued he never had more than an occasional grip on events) loosens. One can argue that as this occurs the dramatic aspect of the work decreases. Yet what takes its place is perfectly in keeping with the narrator's growth. His journeys through and travails in the middle east, or cental asia, or west asia, depending on the perspective, mirrors his disintegrating self-centredness while revealing the book to be, in some respects, a quest novel. The end, with which some are dissatisfied, falls into the tradition of Dante seeing Beatrice in Paradiso. Its reality is in question, and probably a few readers would like to know if what is presented is what happens. That is immaterial to the novel, for thematically Buchan writes of a type of grace which many will feel to be truthful, if not in fact than in their bones, blood and soul, and which perfectly closes the book. _The Persian Bride_ is a rich, emotionally engaging and significant novel, an evocative, spiritual odyssey, for which Buchan must be given high praise.
Rating:
Summary: A literate and stunning novel of romance in modern Iran
Review: Themes of love and sacrifice, as referenced in modern and ancient Persian literature, illuminate this novel of romance in modern Iran. Sacred and profane aspects of Iran, both under the Shah and after the Revolution, are woven into this love story. The story is related first-person by an Englishman, John Pitt, describing his adventure of teaching English, as a 17 year old, in Isfahan in 1974. He fell in love as fast as he fell under suspicion of being a spy. When he secretly married the daughter of a high-ranking millitary officer, and fled with his Persian bride, he was charged with murder, rape and spying. The newlyweds lived secretly for a year, and had a daughter. But they were forcibly separated during his arrest. For more than a decade, jailed first by the Shah, then by the Revolutionary Court, and fighting in the war against Iraq, John Pitt continued to search for his family. Though crippled, broken, and dispirited, he maintained faith and devotion to his family, and was ultimately reunited with his beloved. My Persian wife, who has relatives in Isfahan, and I, an American, identified with the historical, literary, and geographical references to places, events, paradoxes, and epiphanies depicted in this story. Though the plot is fiction, the context is real, and occasionally surreal. The style of writing is lavish, gripping, poetic, sometimes brutally explicit, sometimes as vague as Farsi, calling upon the readers' imagination to fill in the gaps in the drama.
Rating:
Summary: Buchan knows Persia
Review: This book is noteworthy for its emotional and geographical scope as well as its excellent attention to detail. I went to Esfahan in 1974 to teach English, and am personally familiar with the places, Persian speech patterns, and political groups which appear in this book. Buchan has an excellent eye and ear for details as well as the ability to describe the protagonist's emotional reality accurately and chillingly.
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