Warning: this review contains mentions of honor killings, revenge porn and minor spoilers.
Today I’m reviewing the book More Than Just A Pretty Face by Syed M. Masood, a young adult romance book.
Danyal Jilani isn’t the brightest around but he’s pretty, has a wicked sense of humour and his future as a chef is well within his grasp. Though his dad doesn’t approve of his career choice, that doesn’t matter to him. What does matter is the opinion of Danyal’s longtime crush, the perfect-in-all-ways Kaval, and her family, who think he’s a solidly mediocre arranged marriage prospect. When Danyal gets selected for Renaissance Man, a school-wide academic championship, it’s the perfect opportunity to show everyone he’s smarter than they think. He recruits the totally-uninterested-in-him Bisma to help with competition, but the more he learns from her…the more he cooks for her…the more he realises that happiness may be staring him right in his pretty face.
As the main character is a self described idiot the writing has simple prose that make the story flow in a way that makes your brain eagerly drink up the words. The characters are distinct from the protagonist’s simple point of view; he latches onto their features, the intricate ways they speak and their characteristics to make vivid imagery from the simple yet complicated world that is high school while being muslim.
Despite his marriage prospects being poor, he never falters in his religious belief as he naviagate’s his crushes as he works out what he wants and how he views his faith translating into forgiveness for a transgression that never had to be forgiven.
The characters are teenagers, meaning they do stupid things that sound like good ideas at the time but goes against religion, for example having a sexual encounter outside of marriage, having it recorded then unknowingly the recoder posts it online. This act is held against Bisma with a mention that her father wishes her to be dead but Danyal does not hold this transgression against her. In a show of maturity he doesn’t make her feel ashamed of her actions or makes advances; he behaves like a gentleman. When his parents inevitably find out about her transgression they do all they can to dissasway this marriage which results in a climatic speech.
“Qualb-eesaleem.” Which means a pure heart. “In the Quran it says that on the Day of Judgement people will only be saved if they have one of those…what does this have to do with anything,” says Danyal’s mom.
Replies Danyal. “It applies to everything, Mom. Don’t you see? If Allah is going to look at your heart, don’t you think he’s going to look at my heart? And Bisma’s heart? He’ll look at them all. And when this God that we worship, the source of all love, of all justice, looks at her heart and finds it broken, he’ll wonder who dared to break it and why. What will any of you do then? I know I’m not…you know, wise or whatever, but the way I see it, by punishing people for what we judge to be sins, by hurting them, we all become sinners. The only thing we have to do with other people is to be careful with their hearts. That’s all. Who is forgiven, who is punished, it’s not our business.” Just a beautiful speech by the main character.
Now, how this all came about is because of Renaissance Man. The book’s main theme is shattering preconceived notions about people. We see this with the real life character Winston Churchill that Danyal researchers. We all know who this larger than life person is, when you think about Winston Churchill your mind immediately goes to the former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. Not along the lines as the protagonist father put it: “that fucker.” We learn that shocker of shockers Winston Churchill was a horrible racist who oversaw the deaths by starvation of three million people in Bengal and terrorised the Muslim populations. As Danyal explores his life, we are joined by the two main female characters to rip off their masks. Kaval, we learn, is interested in being a housewife and being taken care of and is not interested in Danyal, just more interested in the life he can give her. Bisma is more than her mistake, she’s smart, she’s funny, can overlook flaws and see the real person that lies beneath.
I give this book five smiley faces out of five with a recommendation to buy it. Remember to like and subscribe.