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If You Could Be Mine
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2013
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New York Times Review
"I'll find a way for us to be together," Sahar, 17, tells her secret girlfriend. She's been in love with Nasrin since they were 6 years old and dreams of marrying her. But they live in Tehran, where samesex relationships are illegal and brutally punished. Sahar's quest leads her deep into Iran's underground LGBT scene. There she meets Parveen, a transwoman, whose circumstances reveal a surprising fact: Iranian law upholds transsexuals' rights. The state even subsidizes genderreassignment surgery. Sahar starts to wonder: Could she become a man, sacrificing her identity to openly marry Nasrin? She devises a scheme that - even for a teenager drenched in the heady hormones of first love - feels staggeringly naïve. (Never mind that she fails to mention this plan to Nasrin, a fairly flat character, whose idea of devotion is amassing a prodigious collection of shoes.) Farizan's prose is frank, funny and bittersweet, enjoyable even when Sahar's rashness strains belief. And her secondary story lines ring out memorably, especially the speakeasy-style gatherings of Iran's gay subculture and Sahar's relationship with her father, a listless widower.
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