"For as long as we could remember we had been together in the house which established the center of the known world." This farmhouse, in 1950s Ohio, belongs to Gram, a ferociously independent woman who is also known as the Queen of Persia. "We" are Gram's four granddaughters, the observant cousins that form the collective narrative voice of During the Reign of the Queen of Persia.
First published in 1983, winner of the PEN/Hemingway Award the following year, and thankfully now back in print, this story of women and their daughters is just as much a story of the tender, heartbreaking, dangerous ties between women and men. The cousins navigate around their introverted and violent grandfather. They sit at the foot of the sewing machine as Aunt Libby holds court on the lure and lurking disappointments of sex and love. And in the heart of the story, they reckon with the rapid decline and death of Aunt Grace.
Decades of tough history bubble under the surface, and both adults and children display their equal capacity for love and cruelty. The Queen of Persia herself is fragile enough to shed a tear or two, even as she refuses to budge an inch. In a masterful depiction of a family in all its complexity, the unified voice of the cousins opens up space for empathy rather than judgment. Above all, the novel highlights the ways in which myriad forces--good and bad, lighthearted and profound--are in constant competition throughout all of our lives. --Casey O'Neil, bookseller, Elliott Bay Book Company