Diana Abu-Jaber's lush tale of cooking, love, longing, and exile set against the US's ongoing conflict with Iraq stirs the soul and totally fills the senses.

Crescent is a love story between an L.A.-born and -bred, green-eyed, half-Arab blonde chef and an exiled Iraqi intellectual with a mysterious past. Interwoven into the Sirine and Han's love story is the fable of Abdelrahman Salahadin, told by Sirine's uncle, the gently devoted man who raises her after her parents are killed overseas when Sirine is nine years old. Both Abdelrahman's destiny and Sirine and Han's love unfold amid lush surroundings, complete with the heady aromas of Middle Eastern food and the fragrance of the mejnoona tree, which blooms behind the busy café where Sirine works.

Anyone who appreciates either good food or a good love story will find Crescent an absolute delight. Crescent is beautiful and sensual and languid all at the same time, like a perfect Spring day in Oregon.

Abu-Jaber's Crescent is an insightful text that effectively sheds light on the feelings of displacement and belonging that run through the minds of those living in a foreign land. Right from the start, the setting of the cafe in the ethnic ghetto of Westwood as the primary gathering place provides an analytical atmosphere that allows the reader to see the ways in which the main characters of the novel are all searching for something they have not found. Throughout the entire text, a parallel frame narrative (if you can even call it that) provides a dual storyline that not only lightens the mood of the story, but adds complementary elements to the plight of characters like Han, referred to as a drowned Arab lost in a sea of confusion. The symbolism in the text is a key literary device that illuminates the characters' search, as we see first from Nathan's photographs, that attempt to capture a feeling of a long lost love, to Han's scarf, a reminder of a long lost home. By the end of the novel, after the recurrent ideas of dispossession, the author provides a lesson that meshes and mends the story together, best spoken in the words of the Uncle, who says, "That's why they died...Being somewhere he wasn't meant to be."(pg. 343) Indeed, as the story concludes, the two main characters each find their lot in life, as Sirine returns to her cooking, Han to his country.

The largest praise I can give the author is to commend her on her usage of The Arabian Nights as a model of storytelling, a model that kept me enthralled to the text and on the edge of my seat. Overall, the author falls in line as a modern day Shaharazad. My most pressing question is when she will write the continuation to this story?

I am so happy when I can close a book and feel content and satisfied. Not to mention hungry! I wanted to savor every word of this book. The author has an extraordianry fliar for language and detail. Humor, love, mystery, sadness and relief. Her characters are so alive and as though I've known them for years. A beautiful work.

This is one of the most beautifully written, beautifully conceived, and masterfully executed works of fiction I have read in years. I would liken its comic force to the very best of John Barth or Italo Calvino; its tragic dimensions are reminiscent of Annie Proulx's Postcards. Arabian Jazz is a small masterpiece, as finely crafted as polished stone. Anyone who wishes to see where fiction ought to take us should read this book.

Got this book for Christmas, and read it in two days. What a great story from one of the truly original voices to come along in a long time. This book examines life in a way that is funny and inspiring. The writing is thoughtful and highly crafted, without losing the humor of every day life. Definitely read this book.

Briliant! Showing a deft touch for character and charming with high hilarity, Diana Abu-Jaber introduces us to a world so beautifully realized it can only be described as saturated. Caught by ancestry, the role of women in Jordan and America, family tragedy, personal ambition, romance, and anxiety, two sisters strive to rework a habitable America. Abu-Jaber's Dickensian ability to juggle a burgeoning cast and her enormous tragicomic talent (reminiscent of Louise Erdrich and Annie Proulx) produce a jewel of a book. A series of darting revelations instantly grace what had been even some of the book's stock characters with a presence and beauty that had me making silent "oh's" with my mouth.