AYA DANE

Aya Dane is a visual artist who has less than 40 days to create
a masterwork that could solidify her legacy as a contemporary virtuoso.

The patron who has presented this
strange challenge is only one of the many mysteries in Moroccan writer Alaoui’s (Dreams of Maryam Tair, 2015)
second novel. As Aya labors to develop her painting, buried memories of her
childhood in Tangiers surface, both confusing and clarifying her understanding
of her own identity. Though she has already achieved considerable success in
the art world and lives in bustling Cambridge, Massachusetts, Aya is a recluse.
Her only connections to the world are a single confidante and a few text
messages she receives from a mystery sender, so it’s up to her to piece
together the puzzle of her past. This is an engaging and at times
suspenseful story about the creative process, trauma, and migration, aided by
Alaoui’s skillful pacing and vivid descriptions. While the characters
populating Aya’s life can verge on caricature, Aya herself, as an immigrant, a
woman, and an artist, embodies the ways in which identity and memory mold one
another. She is a complex combination of drive and uncertainty, and it can be
riveting to watch her work as Alaoui describes the way she deliberates on color
and texture, perception and purpose. “Hers was the expression of a broken
machinery, a fragmented body split between two shores, two realities, two ways
of being that, in the end, crumbled into tiny pieces that shattered all sense
of identity,” Alaoui says of her protagonist.

The lyrical prose pays off more than the psychological twists
and turns, but the combination leaves a lasting impression.