Wave

Wave

Mel 4.5.22

Details:

  • author: Diana Farid
  • full title: Wave
  • narrator: Diana Farid
  • genre: poetry, YA, novel-in-verse
  • topics: #surfing, #comingofage #OCD #immigrant #cancer
  • publisher: Recorded Books
  • publish date: 29.03.2022
  • timing: 3:30:00

My Rating of the Audiobook:

  • content: 💙💙💙💙
  • narration: 💙💙💙💙💙
 

Goodreads



Excerpt from the Book:

Mihmūnī (a Persian party)

Everyone has arrived at the party
two hours late.
Right on time for
Persian time.

Every chair in the house
lines the living room wals
for guests to sit.

Coffee tables in the middle,
piled up with fruit, cucumbers, nuts,
and nougat candy,
will get pushed to the side
after dinner
for the actual dancing.

Phoenix is missing the party.
He and his younger sister, Bel,
have their guitar recitals.
They're not Persian anyway.

I can see his house
from the
                living
                            room. Wish I was there listening
                            to Depeche Mode and the
                Cure,
not Persian songs
played on synthesizers.

My Thoughts:

Set in the 1980s, California. Wave is about a 13-year-old Persian girl called Ava. She has a mild OCD - we can see this also from the style of the poems. Her mother is a single-parent doctor, and she wants Ava to become a doctor, too. But Ava, more than becoming a doctor, wants her teen freedom. To hang out with her friends, have fun, enjoy the music, and surf. Wave is a deeply moving and occasionally sad coming-of-age novel-in-verse.

I’m glad I had a chance to listen to this in an audiobook form read by the author - Diana Farid. This way, it sounded even more like a novel and not just a collection of poems.

About the Author:

Diana Farid MD, MPH is an clinical assistant professor of Medicine at Stanford University and is a board certified family medicine physician who maintains a practice caring for Stanford University students. She is also a a writer, filmmaker and maternal and child public health specialist having worked for over 20 years caring for patients and creating stories for health. Her poetry has been presented in journals, gallery exhibits and live story telling events. You can learn more about her and her work by visiting dianafarid.com, where you can also find links to videos for children about respiratory biology. When not writing or doctoring, you can find her in a grove of towering redwood trees, making music with her husband and four children.

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