Doma Mahmoud

Representation: Egyptian characters
Trigger warnings: Racism, terrorism, mass death, explosions and plane crash mentioned, death of a relative
Score: Five points out of ten.
Find this review on The StoryGraph.

I wanted to read Cairo Circles for a while but never got around till now. I saw it in a library I visited, so I picked it up and glanced at the blurb, except there wasn't one--there was only praise from websites and other authors. I didn't know if I would enjoy this fictional composition, so I hoped for the best. When I closed the final page, Cairo Circles was unenjoyable.

Spoilers ahead. I've warned you.

It starts in the early 2000s with the first person I see, Sheero, living his new life in New York after immigrating from Egypt. The book quickly switches to other characters' POVs, but I didn't care much for them since I felt distant and disconnected from them. I appreciated that Cairo Circles' central theme is family and the interconnected relationships and dynamics between people, with a little religion sprinkled into it. The differences in people's lives between Egyptians living in Egypt and Egyptian Americans were intriguing. However, it has flaws due to the writing style and the author's choices.

The writing style is all over the place. It's unclear if that's intentional, but it keeps switching from place to place, character to character, 1st POV to 3rd POV and, sometimes, paragraph type to paragraph type. Sounds disjointed? It is. It's challenging to follow anything in Cairo Circles. I felt like I read three separate stories rather than one cohesive plotline. I wanted to focus on Sheero's life as it was the most fascinating, but I had to concentrate on irrelevant subplots. It felt more frustrating the more I read Cairo Circles. Its most prominent flaw is the characters themselves as I couldn't relate to them, and it didn't help that they weren't the most likable ones I've read. Perhaps the author made that decision to make the characters more imperfect and realistic instead of writing Mary Sues and Gary Stus, but he could've added personality traits instead. Why did the author portray one character as a terrorist? Not all people from the Middle East and North Africa like him are like that. The conclusion of Cairo Circles is only okay. I'm done. I'm so done.

To summarise, Cairo Circles could've been an outstanding example of literary fiction, but the overcomplicated writing and other issues bogged it down, making me enjoy it less. I wish that I'll find a delightful piece of literature someday.… (meer)