Dar Es Salaam

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Summary: A really amazing novel...
Review: Dar es Salaam is one of those novels that captures a young woman's soul. Tara Kai takes the reader into a world filled with questions and thoughts of a girl named Tatum. Her experiences and feelings for the characters in the novel help one understand a young woman's mind and ideas. I believe every girl and woman can relate to any of the women in this story. The novel has an original voice and it truly stands out on its own. Tara expresses the events and ideas in the book beautifully (and let me say... GREAT ending!) A very lovely book and a very gifted author.

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Summary: Tara Kai - Dar es Salaam
Review: Tara Kai manages to weave the world of illusion with the hard facts of reality in "Dar es Salaam." It is a wonderful work, detailing the mystifying beauty of Africa through the eyes of an adolescent 14-year-old, Tatum. Tatum's train-of-thoughts are innocently humorous, (particularly because the novel is written in the voice of a 14-year-old), and I think Kai is being critical on the commercialized notion of feminity and sex in popular women's magazines, such as Cosmopolitan and Seventeen.

Here we see how silly the love advices and how ludricrious magazines, geared towards women to tempt them to drastically change their appearance, really are. One almost feels sad for Tatum, and the characters are so real, that you feel that you want to grab Tatum by the collar and shake her into reality. Life-like and humourous, I recommend this book for anyone who loves fiction, and especially for those people who need a wake-up call to realize that there is more to life than the fine, glossy print of magazines.

Rating:
Summary: Deftly written, with the characters truly coming alive
Review: Tara Kai's debut novel, Dar Es Salaam is the story of Tatum who is transitioning from a fanciful adolescent girl to a knowledgeable woman. Tatum travels with her family on vacation to the Tanzanian capital city of Dar es Salaam where she finds herself drawn to Mohammed (called Mo), a 40-year-old Indian man and friend of her stepfather. Tatum's attractions evolves into desire, then obsession, culminating in a resolute and emotional manipulation of the older man by the much younger girl. A deeply engaging, ultimately satisfying, highly recommended novel, Dar Es Salaam is deftly written, with the characters truly coming alive within the mind's eye of the reader.