Not a book I’d have normally picked up, but someone suggested the title for our local book group last month. Part of the fun in book group is discovering new authors and I’ve enjoyed The Little Coffee Shop of Kabul by Deborah Rodriguez. It’s lifted the curtain for me on a world that up until now had remained largely hidden. Hidden not just for me, but also most of Europe and probably large parts of America too.
Perfecting a soy latte?
That said, I’ve a few issues with the novel. Chiefly, it does little more than glance at the war-zone realities of death, destruction, exile, orphaned children and life-changing injury. All while skimming over the surface like a barista perfecting a soy latte.
The idea that a coffee shop can serve as refuge from these horrors doesn’t feel even remotely believable, sadly, despite the best efforts of Sunny, its good-natured owner.
Some of this cynicism is just personal preference: I don’t generally enjoy novels that skirt around what’s actually happening, shading out anything too unpleasant. But I’m also guilty of feeling squeamish if writing gets too gory, so maybe I’m just a hypocrite.
Rodriguez is almost as determined to airbrush out anything too unpleasant as Sunny is to re-paint a wall in her back garden. The wall keeps getting knocked down and built again, a motif about national and personal recovery running throughout much of the book.
Stoned to death
One of the male characters starts out as a hard-line Muslim who sympathises with the local Taliban. Changed by little more than a few glimpses of Yazmina’s pretty face, he rapidly agrees to mend his ways and marry her, although by this point she has a child by her late husband. He even selflessly promises to raise the child as his own. Normally, the author admits, an Afghan woman in these circumstances would have been stoned to death or forced into prostitution, so the idea of an extremist recanting on his mad ideology to become a metrosexual dad felt a little far-fetched. Heavens, I know plenty of well-off women in Western Europe whose husbands have refused to stick around once a baby has arrived; it’s hard to believe the Taliban does much to encourage its supporters to do nighttime feeds, swap tips on Mumsnet and organise play dates.
Archetypal outsider
Central to the book’s cast is Sunny, the American owner of the eponymous little coffee shop. She’s an engaging character who functions well as an almost archetypal outsider in Kabul, but her deeper character remains something of a mystery to us. It never becomes completely clear why she’s chosen to set up the shop and stay in Kabul, nor do we learn what she may be trying to escape back home. However, her character allows western readers to experience wartime Kabul alongside her. Like Sunny, we too are stunned by the idea of people taking their guns to a coffee shop. In a milder way, we also feel her relief when, at the end of a long day, she goes up onto her terrace to smoke, relax and enjoy the fresh night air.
We’re touched by Sunny’s kindness to Yazmina, the young Afghan girl who’s in the vulnerable situation of being pregnant without any family of her own. Or, crucially, a husband. We watch her take Yazmina into the coffee shop, giving her a room of her own and some work cleaning the café. Aware that Afghan society is a cruel, dangerous place for women, especially anyone pregnant but minus a husband, Sunny helps keep the young woman’s condition secret.
Losing yourself in make-believe
The novel zips along, engaging and entertaining as it goes, and, while some of it didn’t feel entirely believable, the idea that women from different nationalities can get together to help each other remains appealing. It was a shame that the idea didn’t quite convince us as a realistic set-up, but sometimes losing yourself in make-believe can still be incredibly enjoyable.
Helen Fowler Writer 