Stealing Nasreen was a nice, quiet novel about connections between people. I enjoyed it a lot, I love reading characters in the city I live in, though I did think it obvious that it was Farzana Doctor's first novel. It felt a bit clumsy in places, a little rough in corners, but overall it was a strong debut.

The titular Nasreen is a 30ish South Asian Toronto lesbian, totally ordinary in a lot of ways. She's still healing after her recent break up with a cheating girlfriend, she works as a psychologist at a hospital, and she's trying to connect more to her father after her mother's recent death from cancer. Nas is a very likable, very relatable character. She's in her 30s, a professional with a career, but she's still not 100% certain where she's going or what she's doing.

Shaffiq and his wife Salma have only been in Canada for two years, immigrating after Shaffiq was passed over for one too many promotions for being Muslim. He's an accountant working as a night cleaner at the hospital Nasreen works at. Salma is a former schoolteacher working at a dry cleaners because she doesn't have the accreditation. Shaffiq is bored by his job and starts to collect tiny objects tossed by ( )

This book reminds me of the lesbian movie Puccini for Beginners. A couple individually meet the same lesbian who's just gone through a tough break up and the couples lives go a little topsy turvey. They learn about themselves and about each other.

Of course, this book was more than the movie. It also had themes touching on immigrants in a new country. (It took places in Toronto Canada and most of the characters were from India). There was also a little bit regarding religion, Islam and Hinduism, but that was a very, very, very small subplot.

I also found interesting the scenes where Nasreen is in her role as a psychologist of some sort. And the subplot with Nasreen and her father was nice too.

But the most impressive part of the book for me was the fact that it was in present tense. I've tried to read five or fewer novels that were written in the present tense and have never really been able to finish most of them (or in some cases even get through the first couple of chapters). This book was different though. Not only was it a pleasant read for me, but during most of the novel I was seriously pulled into the story and didn't even notice the tense that it was in.

I really liked this book. It was a bit more lesbian than Six Metres of Pavement with some romance and some suspense and a lot about family. A solid piece of literature. ( )