Thoughts on “Midnight: A Gangster Love Story” – or, Why Am I Reading This Book?

Assalamu alaikum, I don’t even know why I started reading this book, perhaps because the first chapter intrigued me (even if I didn’t like the language, etc.). And I wanted to see where the book led. Now I’ve not finished the book, but I felt the need to write. Because a couple things stood out, though I want to put out a spoiler alert before I start because I may inadvertently give some things away.

I have a habit sometimes of skimming through a book before reading the whole thing, I go to the ending first, and then flip backwards, and then start reading the book either from the beginning or from wherever it was I left off before I looked at the end.

Anyway, I was reading a few reviews and someone mentioned the “cliff-hanger ending” that they didn’t like, and I have to agree with that. The ending didn’t leave me satisfied at all. Based on the 115 pages I’d already read, the ending didn’t make me want to read the rest. The ending was sorta like “oh, I’m already almost to page 500, I gotta hurry up and finish this”.

The Japanese woman Midnight meets ends up becoming his wife, though it doesn’t seem he got any closer to understanding her toward the end of the book. I had a kind of “oh come on, you can’t be serious” feeling about it. Here are two people, he doesn’t speak Japanese, she doesn’t speak English, and they’re married? Or, did I miss something? And the sex scenes! Yuck! I’ve always felt embarrassed about sex scenes. I’m not prudish but hearing people pretending to have sex on TV, or, *shudder* when I’ve actually heard in real life people doing it, or, when reading about it in books, I feel as though I’ve walked in on someone, that I’m watching or listening to something that I shouldn’t be and it bothers me. And when reading about it, the less graphic it is, the better. I mean, “they made love” would suffice for me. I don’t need all of the graphic descriptions that I glanced through in this book.

And at this point, I feel the need to defend myself and say something to the affect of “I’m not prudish”, however, some things just need to be kept quiet, I guess.

Anyway, so at the end of the book Midnight goes running off to Japan, yet we don’t know why, something about Akemi’s father getting angry, something about a letter that he doesn’t know what it says. We don’t know why the uncle/father? is angry (I’d think it was because of Midnight marrying her?). I mean, there is just a lot more questions than answers. And I find myself not liking Midnight too much. I find him to be a bit on the self-righteous side. And his meeting Akemi, it kinda goes against the kind of persona, the no-nonsense, look-before-you-leap kind of character that the author has made Midnight to be. But then again, I’ve not made it to the end of the book yet, so maybe there are a few things I’m missing.

Of course this is my reaction after getting what appears to be a third of the way through the book, and it’s 2:30 in the morning. Has anyone else read this? What did you think? I’m just not sure, based on the book so far, based on some reviews I’ve read, I’m just not sure that I want to finish it. I like sitisfying endings, endings that give me resolution. And this book’s ending doesn’t seem to do that. And I’m still trying to decide whether or not I like the treatment of Islam and Muslims in this book. It’s better than most treatments I think. There’s just something strange about this character, Midnight, someone who’s so “moral” yet, well, uses foul language, and describes his sex scenes in a way no “moral” person would describe them, that I’m aware of. And there are just some other things, that kinda sorta bother me, that I can’t quite put my finger on. Midnight in one instance comes across as a protective brother/son, and the next seems like a self-righteous prick. And the little dig about American Muslims in the beginning of the book? Hmmm… Though it just occurred to me that this is an author writing as if she is a person from “over there”, trying to get used to being “over here”. And my thoughts are all scattered so I’ll stop. Perhaps I’ll write more on this once I’ve had some sleep.

Also, before I go, and this is completely off the subject, but I was actually able to find this on www.bookshare.org, a site that makes print materials available to the blind/visually impaired, and others with reading/print disabilities. Mashallah. Perhaps if we could get Muslim authors and book producers to have their works scanned and placed on this site, it would also help blind, visually impaired, and other print/learning disabled Muslims get access to material that they’d not otherwise get.

And on that note, I really have to go to bed.