How to Read the Air

I received this book through LibraryThing's Early Reviewer program. This is Mengestu's second novel. His debut was The Beautiful Things that Heaven Bears, which I also enjoyed.

Jonas Woldemariam is the son of Ethiopian immigrants. He grew up in Peoria, Illinois, but when we first meet him, he is

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living in New York City and working for an organization that helps immigrants from around the world gain asylum in the United States. A large part of Jonas’s job is retelling their stories to increase their chances of gaining asylum. This idea that life stories are constructed and reconstructed pervades the book. As Jonas seeks a future for himself, he must make sense of his past. Through flashbacks to a trip that his parents took to Nashville before he was born, we gradually piece together the histories of Yosef and Mariam and come to understand how Jonas’s childhood experiences continue to impact him today.

There were moments while reading this book that I was completely drawn in. Mengestu is one of those writers who chooses precisely the right words and details to evoke emotion and let readers inside the heads and hearts of the characters. This is a beautifully written novel.

However, there were also moments while reading this book that the story was a bit hard to follow. The details of Yosef and Mariam’s life in Ethiopia, escape to the United States, and relationship as husband and wife were provided slowly throughout the book, and sometimes it was difficult to separate fact from reconstructed life story. Because of this shifting picture, it was hard to be sympathetic to either of these characters, or even to feel like I really understood Jonas. It wasn’t until I had turned the last page that I realized that was the point. Although we think that we understand the histories and experiences of others, life stories are complex. What we believe to be true reverberates throughout our lives and our relationships. It is not just the story that conveys that message – the message is reinforced through the experience of reading the book.

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Jonas Woldemariam, the American born son of Ethiopian immigrants, has recently lost his teaching job in Manhattan and separated from his wife. He seeks to recreate his late parents' journey from Peoria, Illinois to Nashville, Tennessee, in an effort to learn about their lives and to understand his

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own confused and troubled past.

Jonas was born in the Midwest, not quite American nor fully African, and he is ostracized and treated as an exotic by his classmates and neighbors. His home is not a sanctuary, due to his father's violent outbursts towards him and his mother, and he copes by internalizing his thoughts and feelings, and making himself as invisible as possible to his father. He obtains a bachelor's degree in literature, moves to New York, and takes on a series of odd jobs. While working at a center that provides legal aid to recent immigrants he meets Angela, an African-American law student, and the two eventually marry.

Angela loves Jonas, and through her connections at work she is able to get him a job teaching English literature at a private Upper East Side school. On the surface it would seem as though Jonas would be content; however, his self isolation and inability to express or articulate his feelings and his frequent tendency to lie or spout half-truths frustrate Angela, who throws herself into her work and spends less time with her husband as a result.

After the couple separate, Jonas finds himself completely alone, as he has no friends or family. He has no clear sense of who he is or what he should do now that he is completely free. He realizes that he must go back to the past, to recreate his parents' journeys and lives as best he can, in order to determine what he should do with his life.

[How to Read the Air] has some roots in the author's past, as he did grow up in Peoria, but it is far from an autobiographical novel. On my initial reading I was somewhat lukewarm toward this book, despite its beautiful writing and richly portrayed characters, mainly because I could not identify or understand Jonas. However, after reading several recent interviews of Mengestu and thinking about the book over the past few days, I have come to appreciate it much more, as I find that this book, and its protagonist, have a lot to say about the life of an immigrant to America, along with anyone who finds himself caught between cultures or engaged in a struggle of self discovery. The book is filled with melancholy, yet it ends on a hopeful note, as Jonas is a sympathetic character despite his many flaws and shortcomings.

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I was sent this book from the publisher. I'm more than halfway through it (read 184 pages), but it just does not grab me. The four main characters are Jonas, his Ethiopian immigrant parents Mariam and Yosef, and Jonas' wife Angela. There are also four intertwined stories: Jonas' and Angela's rocky

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relationship, Yosef's exodus to America; Yosef's and Mariam's road trip through the Midwest; and Jonas' present-day retracing of that trip. I found them hard to follow, especially with Jonas' frequent stretching of the truth. It got to the point where I did not want to try any more.

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In a word, disturbing. I received an Early Reviewers copy of this book. Had I not, I might have put it down half way through reading it. The four main characters are Jonas, his Ethiopian immigrant parents Mariam and Yosef, and Jonas' wife Angela. The book deals with the African immigrant

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experience, violence, dysfunctional relationships and pretense. I was quite enamored initially with the promise of some kind of poetry. The title How to Read the Air refers to the space between two people when a violent act is about to occur, "the tiniest particles that make up the air we breathe becoming suddenly charged and electrified with a palpable life of their own...before any violent gesture there is a moment when the act is born, not as something that can be seen or felt, but by the change it precipitates in the air." I did continue reading and thankfully there is a moment of redemption at the end of the book. Mengestu is obviously a talented writer, but for me and my experience as a reader it was too little, too late to make the book one I would recommend to others.

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This is a layered story with three plot-lines woven together. I really enjoyed the author's use of language. I felt a little saddened by the main character's difficulty connecting with anyone, although by the end he realizes that he is, in fact, a part of everyone close to him. The story he creates

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for his father's history is fascinating and I really liked how it was presented as a story he told his class. I have added Mengestu's other novel to my wish list and will look for future books as well. Thanks Early Reviewers for this book!

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It started out as not too interesting of a lead in, but it does get better as you share the characters' lives and see why they ended up the way they did and how the lives of immigrants is not always a pleasant one.

There were a lot of powerful, thought-provoking messages throughout the book....it

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definitely isn't just a "surface" read.

My rating is a 4/5 for interest and a 5/5 for the author's writing style....he is excellent at character development, scene description, and of course storytelling.

The book began describing a scene of the narrator's parents leaving on a vacation and then moves into his life and the life of his girlfriend who work as a social worker and an attorney in an immigration center. It continues with incidents about their life in and out of the immigration center.

The book goes back and forth describing the narrator's parents and then his life and the problems all of them had with the main focuses being: relationship problems, lack of communication, family, love, and finding out who you really are. The book also followed Jonas through his childhood and talked about how his life was in that house with his parents who really wanted nothing to do with each other....not a pleasant childhood. It also traced the path of his father from Ethopia to the United States.

It was sad hearing what kind of life Jonas' mother had and how they didn't really keep in touch after he was an adult. Also very sad was the description of his relationship with his father and how it completely affected his life. Taken from page 101 concerning his relationship with his father...."and, I realized then that all I had to do to avoid him was blend into the background. That knowledge followed me from there so that eventually I thought of my obscurity as being essential to my survival."

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I was torn- I would give Mengestu's writing style 5 stars but the story 3, so I averaged out at 4. The book was enjoyable to read because the writing flowed so poetically. Mengestu shares the stories of Jonas and his Ethiopian Immigrant parents, intertwining the stories to explore themes like

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identity and the relationship of the past to the present.
Like several other reviewers, I had trouble getting attached to the main character. Jonas struck me as a weak and passive. I found the end interesting, but a bit unfulfilling. All in all, I loved the writing but I had to push myself to finish because I didn't grow attached to the story.

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Mengestu's second novel explores themes of the immigrant experience in America. The protagonist, Jonas, is the son of Ethiopian immigrants. Out of contact with his parents and disconnected from his roots, Jonas struggles to construct an identity for himself, often inventing stories about himself

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and his family, to the point that fact and fiction become entangled.

There are several separate stories here: Jonas' father's exodus to America; Jonas' parents' road trip through the Midwest; Jonas' present-day retracing of that trip; and the recently past storyline of Jonas' rocky relationship with his wife, Angela. There is the potential for this to be somewhat disorienting to the reader but the author handles the multiple threads well. For the reader, it becomes difficult to tell what's real and what is not in the narrative, thereby not just telling but showing the reader about the disorienting experience of immigration. The author captures the psychological impact of being an immigrant--the shaky identity, the past with gaping holes, the difficulty connecting in a solid way to people around you or even to your own future.

This was a very interesting read that was hard to put down, and a very worthy addition to any collection of literary fiction that focuses on the immigrant experience.

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I loved this novel. Liked the way the author used two story lines to tell his tale. Especially liked the main character who was plainly affected in many ways by the lives of his parents. I found Jonas (the main character) to be likeable despite the event flaws in his character. The author did a

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wonderful job of creating a character who was refreshingly "real". Jonas was not a second generation immigrant who was able to "over come".......he was deeply affected by the process through which his parents found themselves in the Midwest of the U.S. In doing this I think that the author was able to give his character depth and/or soul.
Having been born and raised in the United States with both sides of my family settled here for several generations, I am far from able to imagine the life of an immigrant. Mengestu was able to take me as close as one could come without actually experiencing it myself.
The prose in this book is beautiful. This is a novel I will read a second time, not only for the story but, probably more for the writing style and the emotions conveyed through Mengestu's sentences.
Mengestu will be added to that list of author's whose books I buy as soon as they are published. I have a feeling that this young man's writing's will never disappoint.

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Ever had a main character that just needed a good shaking, or perhaps a slap upside the head? Jonas certainly qualifies in my estimation. The only son of Ethopian refugees, he is raised within a highly abusive marriage by individuals who are damaged by their refugee experience. Jonas manages to

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screw up his life and his marriage by never fully committing to ANYTHING. This is the antithesis of the immigrant boot-strap story we've come to expect. I guess its good to be reminded that not everything is sweetness and light, but I found Jonas annoying. I was hoping he'd get his stuff in a pile, but he never did and I was left disappoined by the lack of a happy ending.

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How to Read the Air is the latest book from Dinaw Mengestu, and it's one that manages to explore the subtle differences between what we believe and what may be true.

Briefly, it is the story of a man named Jonas, who attempts to reconstruct his parents first years in the US when they emigrated from

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Ethiopia. Their marriage was fractured and strange, and in the wake of his own disastrous marriage, he hopes to find answers to his personal identity by going back to his parent’s lives. He believes that by better understanding them, he can make sense of his own awkwardness. He describes his youth:

“I had always suspected that at some early point in my life, while still living with my parents and their daily battles, I had gone numb as a tactical strategy, perhaps at exactly that moment when we’re supposed to be waking up to the world and stepping into our own.”

However, rather than being a straightforward story of nostalgia, Mengestu deepens the narrative by showing, immediately, that Jonas is not exactly truthful. He works for an agency that helps new immigrants acquire legal citizenship in the US, and he’s known for his smudging the lines of truth to create more sympathetic experiences for his clients. In other words, he lies, boldly yet with the awareness of remaining credible. Thus, we learn our narrator is unreliable. How much truth will be revealed as he relates the story of his parents and his own marriage? This creates suspense and makes understanding the characters that much more complicated. A reader is forced to examine each statement and weigh it for accuracy, and consider what Jonas may be trying to hide.

First, we learn of his parents. They emigrated separately, his father first with his mother coming a year later. They are two incredibly different personality types: his father is perceptive and quiet, with a gift for noticing his surroundings and an almost sixth-sense for staying out of trouble. His focus on intangible concepts makes him reserved and wise. His mother, on the other hand, is obsessed with the tangible: possessions made her feel safe and contented in Ethiopia, where her status was high. Now in the US, her position in the world has changed, and as a minority with less wealth than she’s used to, she is insecure and angry.

Jonas himself married Angela, another lost soul who finds security in squirreling money away, while occasionally succumbing to a pair of Jimmy Choos for their therapeutic benefit. Angela is the most fascinating character to me, and in one of her conversations, she also reveals what she thinks of ‘telling the truth’:

“There’s no such thing as kind of true. If I told you the whole story, you could say it’s true, but you don’t know the story. […] Everyone thinks they know the whole story because they saw something like it on television or read about it in a magazine. To them it’s all just one story told over and over. Change the dates and the names but it’s the same. Well, that’s not true. It’s not the same story.”

Angela is beyond needy, and her outlet for her insecurities is to control others as much as possible. She pushes Jonas to change every chance she gets. Despite her success as an attorney, her deep unhappiness is revealed in snarky remarks and a mistrust of everyone. Jonas and Angela are doomed by their inability to know truth. Significantly, Angela is portrayed much like his mother-focused on concrete items she can see and own, while Jonas is more cerebral and aloof. Does he realize how he has replicated his parent's dynamics?

Plot aside, the prevarication that Jonas is prone to makes reading this that much more interesting. It’s difficult to know what facts to accept or disregard, and he gives himself away at times. For example, at one point he describes his mother playing mind games with his father by making him wait endlessly in the car as they leave for their honeymoon. At one point she pretends to forget something and runs back into the house-she’s having a meltdown. Yet, her meltdown is counted in seconds (her little trick for calming herself), and so she allows herself a little more than 200 seconds to calm herself. Then she returns to the car. A stressed out woman with a meltdown that lasts less than four minutes? Seriously, how is that possibly a bad thing? Or is it that Jonas is letting us know that she isn’t actually as moody as he’s portrayed her? Could he be admitting that she's just as fearful as Angela, the woman he left? That would mean his version of both of these women, as controlling and difficult, may not be accurate. Is Jonas up for the challenge of truly understanding his own story?

As a reader, I enjoyed this overall but a few things bothered me. For one, while delving deep into some explanations, he skims over other details that would have bearing: he never explains why, aside from a shared race, that he and Angela married. And, when he takes a job teaching, why the sudden epiphany about his suddenly fitting into the world? What changed? He had worked before in the public sector-what was it about this new job that flipped his identity over? Lastly, a few sentences were structurally ambiguous, and I had to catch myself and reread them a few times to figure out who he was talking about. A minor thing, but it was enough to trip the pace a bit.

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I really loved this book. It was a very quiet, subtle book, but it was very powerful. I really liked the way it was written, with Jonas as the narrator. I thought the characters were all really well developed, and it was interesting to see how Jonas' parents messed up relationship took a toll on

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him and ended up affecting his own marriage. Definitely recommend this to anyone who likes a good quiet read that is really well written.

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I thought this book was just okay. I didn't really like the main character, which may have been one of the reasons I didn't really love the book. I found the main character incredibly weak and he was a pathological liar (as was his mother).

There were basically three stories going here. One was of

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the main character, Jonas and his job and his relationship with his wife. The second was of how Jonas' father first left Ethiopia, but I had a hard time figuring out which parts were supposed to be true and which parts were Jonas' fabrication. The third, the only one I really enjoyed, was about Jonas' parents as a young married couple and new immigrants from Ethiopia.

I liked the author's writing, but the story could have been better.

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This was my first time reading Dinaw Mengestu and I absolutely love his use of words and he eloquent writing. However, the story was extremely under whelming and disjointed. I found at times that I was getting into the groove of the story and then there would be something that just didn't seem to

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fit or make sense.

Mengestu is obviously a brilliant writer and I am sorry that I didn't appreciate the book more.

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Being born and raised in the United States...Midwest, no less....I have found myself reading a large number of books about the immigrant experience. It has allowed me to expand my viewpoint as I travel the minefields of immigration, assimilation, and finally, acceptance of each character's life

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choices. Most of the books I've read were fiction, though the author is often an immigrant themselves, or at least second generation, and inserts a modicum of truth to their fictional protagonists, allowing the reader to delve into an experience we natives will never have. Dinaw Mengestu is one such author who brings his own family story to bear in his latest book "How To Read The Air". With a poetic touch as his muse, he slowly peels back the layers of his main character, Jonas, whose parents immigrated to America from a worn-torn Ethiopia in the 60's. The story threads its way between the present world of Jonas and his failing marriage, his parent's unhappy relationship that scarred him, and his father's tale of escape from Ethiopia that Jonas contrives for himself and the students he is currently teaching at a New York City private prep school. Though the fabric of the story can feel like it's drifting apart at times, his clear writing style holds everything together. At times Jonas describes his indecisiveness nature as someone who is "bobbing out to sea with nothing, not even so much as a life vest of companionship to hold onto."[ p. 54] So much of what Jonas wrestles with in this novel is where he belongs and how to achieve this feeling of acceptance for who he is. His explanation to his wife about the order of his class syllabus reveals his philosophy of life when he tells her, "We accumulate memories and in doing so begin to make our first tentative steps backward in time....And from there our lives grow into multiple dimensions until eventually we learn to regret and finally to imagine." [ p. 97] . Having read such books as "The Namesake", "The Inheritance of Loss", "What Is the What", and "Little Bee", I have come to the conclusion that adapting to life in a culture other than the one you were born to, or being children of first generation immigrants, is fraught with danger, delusion, and depression that affects the lives of all these characters and the authors who have tried to write about this unique experience. We in America have so many immigrant stories to tell, and Dinaw Mengestu's is one of the exceptional ones many readers will cherish.

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“How to Read the Air” by Dinaw Mengestu is a thought provoking novel, telling the story of an immigrant family. Intertwined in the story of the troubled marriage of Jonas and Angela is the story of Jonas’s parents; of whom his father suffered greatly in his bid to reach the United

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States.

Dinaw Mengestu’s novel also enlightens the reader to the difficulties faced by many immigrants - the prejudice and difficulties they must endure. “How to Read the Air” even touches on the affects of the 9/11 attacks and the many who lost their job as a result.

For anyone searching in life, “How to Read the Air” tells the tale of an immigrant family and the searches for happiness that each sought.

I received this book for free, to review from the Penguin Book Club. Also a member of Goodreads.com, Librarything.com and Bookdivas.com
D Bettenson

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“We accumulate memories and in doing so begin to make our first tentative steps backward in time, to say things such as ‘I remember when I was.’ And from there our lives grow into multiple dimensions until eventually we learn to regret and finally to imagine.” Dinaw Mengestu’s “How to

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Read the Air” explores the belief that memory is the story of what has been, might have been, or never was. If two people experience an event, whose memory of the time is real? Can the telling of a memory enlarge and change it’s very shape? Jonas, a teacher, is a memory teller. He tells the story of his own life with his wife, Angela, and that of his parents via his memory, with his interpretations and embroideries. He speaks of his childhood memories of his home life: “…it was easy for terrible things to happen to women when they were out of sight. They took hard hits, and then later slept in your bed where you could protect them.” He tells his students of his father’s flight from Ethiopia: “And while this part of the story wasn’t true to anything I, or anyone I knew had ever experienced, it had an air of serendipitous salvation that struck me as being so unlikely that one had to believe it had occurred that way.” He ruins his marriage to Angela with his embellished memories and outright lies. He is a great storyteller; and he is a superb liar. He is lost emotionally because he has lost his family; knowing them mostly through memory rather than contact. Mengestu employs descriptive prose that is powerful and believable; sometimes realistic and sometimes almost mystical as he explores the concept of memory. “We persist and linger longer than we think, leaving traces of ourselves wherever we go. If you take that away, then we all simply vanish.” This book is a wonderful read that keeps you contemplating it's themes for days.

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How To Read The Air is one of the most compelling books I have read in a long time. The story of immigrants whose lives are constantly interrupted by the volatile nature of life. Yosef and Mariam have spent the beginning of their marriage apart and once they are reunited they discover that they no

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longer fit together as a couple and as a result wind up divorced. Their son, Jonas, has never gotten along with either of his parents and so at the age of 30, decides to retrace his parent's life via a road trip - in an attempt to understand them better. This book has two stories within it - the story of Yosef and Mariam and the story of Jonas - both of which are beautifully written and intertwined in a fluid manner. I found the whole book to be rather engrossing and wound up getting lost in the lives of these sad people. Such a wonderful book to read - one I would definitely recommend.

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How to Read the Air -a metaphor for trying to figure out ones life? This a beautifully written book about a man, Jonas, who tries to travel back in time through his parents desolving marriage. Why? To figure out is own tattered marriage? To find out why he's been adrift his entire adulthood? Travel

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with Jonas for a sad look at life, yet a worthwhile trip.

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well written but i didn't care for the story or the protagonists.

This book did not grab me and I stopped half-way thru. So many books, so little time. Felt slow-moving and ponderous.

Melancholic, elegiacal, and burdened by sorrow, this novel is a long good-bye to marriage between two couples -- the parents' and the son's marriages -- when people are mismatched and scarred by their personal limitations.

We are inculcated that immigrants come to this country for a better life and

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get it. Not so Jonas' parents who emigrated from Ethiopia but not together. The separation and reunion has caused a rift. Jonas' father has violent tendencies, Jonas' mother is not always in control of her mind. His childhood is fraught with their battles and the emotional scars which leave him emotionally suppressed.

There is artistic prose here but plot has been sacrificed to it. And there are better books about marriages than this one: "The Story of a Marriage" by Andrew Sean Greer. Read this novel for a contrast between African and African-American attitudes and orientations, if you will. But these, too, are better explored elsewhere: "Americanah" by Chimamanda Adichie.

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A poignant and beautifully written book in which the son of Ethiopian immigrants to the U.S. struggles to understand the legacy of his parents' failed marriage and to claim an identity of his own. Mengestu has maintained the high standard he established with his first book, The Beautiful Things

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That Heaven Bears, which I also highly recommend.

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This is the story of two couples from two generations: Yosef and Miriam, the parents of Jonas; and Jonas and his girlfriend-then-wife, Angela. The title comes from Yosef’s ability to sense danger and other things in the change in the vibrations in the air. Jonas has this ability to a lesser

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extent.

Jonas is the narrator and uses alternate chapters to delineate the lives of both couples. He works at a center for immigrants who are trying to gain asylum in the United States, which is ironic, as his parents emigrated from Ethiopia.

To understand Jonas, one must understand, or at least try to understand, his parents. Yosef and Miriam were only married for six months when Yosef was arrested and jailed on the night before he was to escape Ethiopia with a friend. He was in sympathy with the rebels, though he never actively took part in any attempts to overthrow the government. His worst crime seems to have been running off his mouth in public. He was eventually released from the prison and made his way to the Sudan, where he worked for a long time at menial jobs until he finally was able to stow away on a ship, which transported him to Europe. From there, he made his way to London and eventually to the United States. The previous brief description does not do justice to the hardships he endured, near starvation being one of them. He finally earned enough money to send for Miriam and met her at the airport with a pitiful little bouquet of flowers. He was not even really sure he wanted her to come to him.

Miriam and Yosef apparently got married out of desperation. A revolution was happening all around them, and when one of her father’s friends introduced them, one thing led to another, as “they” say. Miriam was actually quite content without him. She had a decent job in an office and was able to do pretty much as she pleased with her salary. Everyone almost convinced her that Yosef was dead, and since she hadn’t heard from him in a very long time, she started believing it, herself. When Yosef was able to do so, he began writing to Miriam and preparing for the day when they would be together. One gets the impression that both of them were, at this point, acting out of a sense of duty. As the story wears on, one discovers that they don’t even love each other any more if ever they did. Miriam felt that her station in life was much better before she left Ethiopia. Sad to say, but it appears that she was correct.

Jonas doesn’t actually lie – he makes up the truth. Most of the time, he seems to believe his fabrications, some of which are based in reality, but even those are embellished to the hilt. He was such a lonely, scared little boy, that it’s easy to understand the man he has become. When he was quite young, he learned how to make himself so inconspicuous as to be invisible to his father, thus avoiding confrontation and blows. His mother was not so lucky and bore the brunt of Yosef’s anger many, many times. There are no gory details, but you can almost feel the abuse. Little Jonas watches his mother walk down the street after taking him to school, hating for her to disappear, for he has learned that bad things happen to women when they are out of sight – they take horrible hits and sometimes come to your bed at night feeling that you can protect them. Jonas was estranged from his father almost from the time he was old enough to know him and never did connect with him as they both got older. Jonas did go to see him a few times. Even though he loved his mother and wanted to protect her, they also grew apart. Miriam didn’t want Jonas to visit very often and preferred to be left alone. I think the sight of Jonas brought back more painful memories than she could handle. She always asked him if he were happy, and I think that’s the only way she could let him know that she loved him.

Angela had an equally awful childhood. Her father left her and her mother, though it isn’t clear just how or when, as she had many stories about it. Her mother was prone to leave her alone for a few days at a time but, knowing that her mother would eventually return, Angela became more or less used to the situation and didn’t really worry too much. She was not close to her mother. Nevertheless, when her mother died, Angela had a slight breakdown. She was afraid her mother would be angry with her if she didn’t at least try to grieve.

While Yosef and Miriam stayed together for as long as they possibly could out of a sense of duty, and with not much, if any, love between them, Jonas and Angela stayed together because they did love each other. Angela said once something to the effect of how they were two lost children trying to make it all better for each other.

The book ended without tying up any loose ends, which is just as well, as I don’t see how it could have ended any differently. The author is one whose descriptions bring forth vivid scenes in your imagination. The plot was just twisted enough to make you want to find out what happened next, and the characters were well developed. I ached for all of the main characters in this book, even mean old Yosef. Life can sometimes turn ordinary people into monsters. Sad.

The main point of the story, to me, is that no matter the family dynamic, no matter the love or lack thereof, no matter the problems – there are some people in your life who will always be a part of you, so you’d be wise to try to make the best of them and of the situation, no matter how hopeless it seems..

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