The Unwanted

Starred review from March 1, 2025
Estranged from their home, and, increasingly, from each other, a refugee family endures exploitation, violence, and loss. Told that the family must soon flee their war-torn homeland, eight-year-old Dina sells her silky hair, bargaining hard for a good price. "There is a bright future or a dark future waiting for you," says the wigmaker, ominously. In the days that follow, Dina and her beleaguered parents will witness a murder, weather a treacherous Mediterranean crossing, and navigate the perils of refugee camps. Her parents--Robert, the "minoritysect" professor who collaborated with the "dominantsect" university administration, and Susanna, whose valerian-root addiction has left her vulnerable to abuse--learn the weight of their secrets, and the limits of their marital bond. Fourteen years later, in a future grown even bleaker, Dina works as a translator and presses a sharp fingernail into the soft flesh of her arm, "confronted by the reality of America." Fishman (Don't Let My Baby Do Rodeo, 2016) retains his focus on generational trauma and the immigrant experience but sheds the understated humor of his earlier works. Anchored by stark descriptions of bodies (a crudely shorn mustache; an unwelcome finger probing a waistband), the result is a tense, haunting work that will resonate with many readers in these uncertain times.

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March 15, 2025
A refugee family struggles to be safe, stay free, and reckon with its secrets. Fishman's first two novels, A Replacement Life (2014) andDon't Let My Baby Do Rodeo (2016), were both comic tales about immigrants. His third, by contrast, is a determinedly somber affair. Set in an unnamed war-torn country, the novel centers on George, a professor and poet; Susanna, his wife; and Dina, their 8-year-old daughter. All three are considered "minority-sect," prone to the abuses of the national leader's dominant-sect. As a civil war intensifies and George seems to fall increasingly afoul of the authorities, the three plot an escape. At a refugee camp, awaiting an opportunity to come to the U.S., the family navigates a consular bureaucracy, poverty, and sexual abuse. George grows absent, while Susanna eats compulsively and finds work cleaning the consulate, desperate to be close in any way to those controlling her fate. Fishman's tone in chronicling this experience is heartfelt and dour, deliberate almost to a fault--George has risked harm to himself and his family through a byzantine set of betrayals that confuse his family (and perhaps also the reader), the mood leavened only slightly with excerpts of his poetry. The story catches a spark in its final third, set 14 years later, as Dina attempts to assemble some of the puzzle pieces of her parents' lives; the style shifts into a higher gear, acquiring the speed and lift of a spy thriller while clarifying unanswered questions. Frustratingly, the earlier sections lack that same energy; Fishman effectively captures the fear, malaise, and desperation that comes with others' control of our movements, but it's particularity a drag on the storytelling. An informed, earnest, and at times labored tale of escape.

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