The dynamic among them - playful, complex, unsteady - is the novel’s central appeal. Here, the sisters attempt to make their own kind of domestic happiness.
An uncle whom they’ve never met before offers to take them to his home in New Jersey but it soon becomes clear he is interested only in the checks the orphans bring in, and he abandons them in an apartment to essentially raise themselves. Noreen, Aisha and the temperamental narrator, Kausar, are orphaned by the violent death of their father in Pennsylvania. If anything, adulthood in this book is as muddled and lonely as childhood. In WHEN WE WERE SISTERS (327 pp., One World, $27), the first novel by the poet and screenwriter Fatimah Asghar, three Pakistani American sisters, all under 10, learn the discomfiting truth that the adults aren’t coming to save them. Which is more uncontrollable and terrifying, nature or other people? Once filming starts, she finds that the terrain in “Civilization” is hardly its most dangerous aspect: There are predatory producers, four other ambitious and unpredictable contestants, the eternally watchful eye of the cameras.
I’m just trying to get out of it.” Despite her credentials, she has no real interest in proving herself, but the prize money would allow her to leave her dreary boyfriend, who is only interested in the “aesthetic” of self-sufficiency (“solar ovens, beehives, a greenhouse made of reclaimed windows from the dump”). When “Civilization”’s casting team arrives to recruit her, Mara tells them, “I’m not trying to rebuild society. Mara, raised in the Oregon wilderness from the age of 10, now works at Primal Instinct, “a survival school run by a former blockchain developer named Bjørn” where the wealthy and cosseted go for the “off-grid” experience. Unfortunately, the novel often encounters the same problems as the shows it’s criticizing: It’s repetitive, its shallowness resists any close scrutiny, its surface is too cold and shiny for any depth of feeling. Blair Braverman’s SMALL GAME (279 pp., Ecco, $27.99) uses a “Survivor”-type reality show called “Civilization” to pose questions about authenticity, competition and resilience.
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