Washes, Prays by Noor Naga

Washes, Prays Reviews

• 
  Sai

  I found myself reading entire passages over and over again, just to hang on to the feelings they induced. This is such a remarkable book.
• 
  Shagufta

  This verse novel is brave and beautiful and complex and I loved it.
• 
  Syd Lazarus

  Sucked the air out of me, totally winded me. It's devastating, funny, clever, and anyone who reads it will wish they could write like Noor.
• 
  Kat Mcl

  this was incredible! loved the format of their poetry
• 
  Hijaz Jamal

  "wherever you turn
  there is the Face of God"
  
  and when the dark
  entered the kitchen and sat
  panting like a good dog
  
  how nouf
  will I ever repent?

  
  
  Parts of the story might be too enigmatic for me, but the blurb makes it clear what the whole plot is about - an immigrant Muslim woman named Coocoo who, estranged as she is in Toronto, finds herself entangled in an extramarital affair with a married professor. It is amid this bad life decision that she questions her faith and desperately struggles to remain tethered to Allah, always with a loyal friend, Nouf, by her side.
  
  The novel is written in the form of prose poems. Throughout the book, we are privy to Coocoo's stream of consciousness twice in two separate sections, with an interlude in between with that of Nouf, as she reflects and witnesses her friend interrogate the possibility of repentance.
  
  While it is apparent upon my second reading that the occasional mature language used (content warning 😬) makes me feel uncomfortable (although some might be taken aback with even the basic premise of the book), I love the author's necessarily raw portrayal of what it means to sin, yet all the while genuinely grapple for whatever one can salvage from the ashes of faith that remain. Also, the random encounters that I had with reference to the Qur'an and hadith as well as ramblings on the Arabic language made this all the more fascinating to read.
  
  In any case, I wish I'm smart enough to understand poetry, but surprise, surprise my brain isn't built for one lol. Well to be fair, Washes, Prays isn't a collection of poems. The author calls her book a verse-novel. And the parts that I do manage to understand somehow make me give this book 5 stars (yes, unreliable ratings I know 🚩). 🙃
• 
  Bookwookie ✿

  “The question what is a suitable place to put God is not the question, the question is how did God get out in the first place”
  
  some of the poems I didn’t really understand, but I felt like that just added to the whole premise- it’s meant to be ramblings of a woman in deep obsessive love, so I thought that it made sense. I really really liked it anyway and the poems which I did understand were so so good!!!
• 
  Brandon Forsyth

  To borrow a line from Talib Kweli, both profound and profane. Naga shows an incredible use of spacing here, and I love the way the pauses implied by her spacing make some of the words hit and connect and separate. I’d love to see this poetry performed.
• 
  Esperance A Mulonda

  | Dying animals do not shout I WANT MY KISS BACK FROM YOUR EYELID GIVE ME BACK MY HAIR GIVE ME BACK MY HYMEN GIVE ME BACK MY GOD I
  
  
  
  This book has a charm that i cannot explain. But i love it, I really do.
• 
  Rachel Rose

  Noor Naga has written an accomplished, powerful collection. Coocoo's voice is powerful yet vulnerable, her observations passionate and provocative as she chronicles the breakdown of her affair.
• 
  Peyton

  Washes, Prays is an excellent example of why you should never judge a book by its cover. If only the imagery of the poems inside this book matched the beauty of the imagery on the outside. Several fantastic books have been written about women who stay with men who lie, cheat, and ignore them. The appeal of these books relies on their poignancy in exploring the personal and social context of why women put up with these arrangements. Unfortunately, Washes, Prays does not provide any explanation as to why Coocoo is so infatuated with a married man and unwilling to end their affair. Coocoo is incredibly self-deprecating. She remarks that she would be willing to lick the inside of her boyfriend’s wife’s toilet if it meant he would stay with her. There are disgusting and dehumanizing moments like this throughout the book, and none of them feel justified in the context of a simple affair. Naga undeniably has many great ideas. She provides an interesting, in-depth discussion of Coocoo’s crisis of faith over being ‘the other woman’ (“this religion is not sentimental is not just fuzzy heart-feels / it is a code of law if you step outside the law this religion stops talking to you / it is unclear how to proceed”) but this fails to redeem the book as a whole. I also take issue with Naga’s contrived use of form. Overall, Washes, Prays is a boring and uncomfortable read that I would not recommend to anyone.
• 
  Laura Applebee

  This is such a beautiful and heartbreaking book.
• 
  Hesa Almheiri

  I picked up this poetry book because it said poetry and the cover was nice
  I'm glad in this case I judged a book by its cover because I learned a new poetry genre
  The story so simple yet it never fails to hurt, to show the tenderness of women and their love when they are whole or when they fall apart, or watching you fall apart
• 
  Hala

  Washes, Prays to me is an example of a book with potential that has not been realized. I struggle to review it fairly, because my focus was drawn to the spacing and to deciphering the seemingly unnecessary complexity the author brought to just about every sentence.
  
  One thing was very clear, and that was the emotional roller coaster that resulted from the relationship between Coocoo and the married man. Related to this, the bond between the two best friends was amplified, with a somewhat hidden message that it was Nouf who pulled Coocoo through and helped her find her footing.
  
  I found it off-putting that the story of a Muslim woman having an affair with a Muslim man is very explicitly attached to Islam itself. I’m not sure why this was so integral to the book.
  
  The poems allude to the struggle with understanding religion, and the difficulty in living life according to a series of rights and wrongs. All fair - but in my opinion, had the author put in a little more work into deciphering the characters’ personas, their relationship to Islam and their ecosystem, it may have been more interesting.
  
  As it stands, this is “just” a story of an affair where the woman struggled with her personal morals, ethics and sexual desire (maybe even love). The pseudo-added edge would be the dramatics in which the prose was written.
• 
  Lawrence

  A novel of beautiful, heartbreaking obsession, it is almost monomaniacal in its interiority of Coocoo's love and self-doubt with only a brief intermission for her friend Nouf's more expansive meditations on faith.
  
  Like good poetry it captures the incredible pull of emotion with precision and incredible imagery and depth. Her lover, and indeed, most everything around her, remains undefined and fleeting, only visible in brief glimpses as she gasps for air, with no periods or capital letters only adding to the breathlessness.
  
  The form for both Coocoo and Nouf's meditations is carefully considered and adds to their characterization, hyperfocused in emotion and only allowing a small range, the novel pierces you to the core while leaving a wide edge of mystery that you can then apply and add your own experiences as you process Coocoo's trauma with her.
  
  
• 
  Talia

  ???/?
  
  I picked up this book because I read (and ADORED) If An Egyptian Cannot Speak English.
  
  What I didn’t realize I was about to read was 63 pages of prose that’s either meant to confuse or meant for a different audience.
  
  For the entire time that I spent on this book, I had only a very vague sense of what was going on. I know that Coocoo had an affair with the professor and she was obsessed with him and then it ended and she went to his house naked and in a sheet covered in period blood and the wife answered the door and that’s about all I got.
  
  In light of this, I cannot even fathom how I might rate it.
  
  Therefore, I give it: 3 question marks. 😤
• 
  OK

  Of all the horny women of the heterosexual persuasion lusting for older/married men this is one of the better ones. lyrical, aesthetically pleasing, linguistically nimble. Each ending so meticulously toiled over and brilliantly paced.
  
  
  You moved through the room like someone I was once young with / someone I already miss (20)
  
  
  I have always been that one’s voice is thinner when one is naked, the way water at every temperature has a different flavor (43)
  
  
  I comfort myself: she might know his morning smell, but she / doesn’t know her own fleecing / she might know his morning smell but I know her name and mine (51)
• 
  Jacob Wren

  Noor Naga writes:
  
  
  freud who enjoyed cocaine for 13 years left in his will 153 boxes of clinical notes and correspondence he left them to the library of congress with stipulations: some boxes were to be accessible at once to the public some boxes were to be accessible in 2020 some in 2050 some in 2053 some in 2057 eight of the boxes were never to be accessible to anyone at all what I’m trying to say is it’s possible to give a gift that is not there or even to give a gift that swallows what is.
  
  
• 
  Noora

  Hmmm, of course it’s incredibly difficult to craft rich and nuanced characters in-verse, but I do wish CooCoo came across as a little more than... purely desperate (which is perhaps the point of her character, in which case my question is: did she have to be?). I think there’s a way to capture the contradictions of yearning (with)in a religious framework without falling into the cliche of writing really obsessive/depressive characters. Im not sure this book successfully does that. There were some really beautiful passages but mostly this book fell flat for me. Sad!
• 
  Sumaiya Matin

  "Washes, Prays" by Noor Naga. I am absolutely fascinated by this story about a young hijabi woman who endures a crisis of faith and has a download spiral as she falls harder in love with a married man. In this poetic, almost musical telling, the character negotiates what it means to pray while in love, although it is not quite the right kind of love, and after having experienced loneliness for years. Other than the experimental storytelling, I loved how the author captured contradictions.
• 
  Caitlin

  Washes, Prays is beautiful and funny and sad, and, I think, more than a story of a heartbreak, more than a story of a crisis of faith, it’s a story of two young women, trying to find themselves and their way. My full review is available here:
  https://essentiallyanerd.wordpress.co...
• 
  Savanna

  While I sometimes wished for a little more concrete description of the places where this story unfolds, the book's focus on interiority is effective. There are some exquisitely beautiful lines here that will stay with me, and the narrative is deeply moving and realistic. An inspiration.
• 
  Laura

  I enjoyed the voice in the poetry although the format I found difficult to connect to. I need more space in my poetry
• 
  n

  'the wind tonight has teeth and so do i'
• 
  Bookworm Adventure Girl

  For my full review, please follow the link below:
  
  https://www.bookwormadventuregirl.com...