The 14 stories in Farah Ali's debut collection, People Want to Live, proceed with a measured assurance, even if their characters often tremble under anxious uncertainties. In the aching opener, "Heroes," a mother sifts through grief after her son is killed, for a year, trying to make sense of her loss and searching for an accurate portrait of his memory. In "Bulletproof Bus," the narrator aspires to become a driver on a special new transit line in Karachi, in spite of personal and bureaucratic obstacles. And in "Believers," a car accident forces another type of driver to choose between letting a man die or destroying everything his only father figure worked for. The dilemmas might seem insurmountable, but Ali's lean prose and keen characterizations make sharp, riveting work of them.
Hailing from Pakistan, Ali writes purposefully about the urban, the rural and the winding, sometimes treacherous, roads that connect the two. In one of the collection's many standouts, "Tourism," her sense of humor eviscerates the visitor's desire for easy epiphanies to be found in the rugged landscape of a foreign region. "Someone younger than fifty--perhaps a waiter at your hotel--will understand you better in a language in which you are already fluent (Urdu or English), so do not strain your own learning abilities. You are, after all, here to get healed."
There are no easy epiphanies to be found in People Want to Live. Instead, these immaculate works of short fiction highlight a shared sense of resilience that is both crisp and well-earned. --Dave Wheeler, associate editor, Shelf Awareness