“This is our world at night. This image is seen as a symbol of our development. We look at the pretty lights, and we pat ourselves on the back for all the progress we’ve made. But look at the dark places. Look at the places where there is no light. There are still people there, and they are just like us. We can tell ourselves we’re better than them, but we’re not. We live differently, mostly because of where we were born, but that doesn’t give us the right to use and discard others. Our humanity is dependent on our recognition of their humanity. Either we’re all human, or none of us are. The darkness other people have to endure is the price for the light we enjoy. If history teaches us anything, it should teach us not only to look at the lights we kept on, but also the lights we put out” (Masood 2020, pp. 315-316).
When I first started reading this book, I was hoping for a fun, cute, light-hearted romance. While I certainly got that, this book is SO much more than just a sweet slice-of-life story. It tackles tough issues like racism, xenophobia, revenge porn, and religion in a down-to-earth, humorous way, never feeling preachy or too on-the-nose. It gives readers an excellent window into the Muslim culture, showing us both the positive and negative effects of fundamentalist religion on young people. It’s touching, heart-breaking, and fun, and I enjoyed every second of it.
More Than Just a Pretty Face is told from the perspective of a young Muslim man named Danyal Jilani. Danyal might not be the brightest student in his class, but he has one huge talent: he loves to cook, and hopes to one day be a professional chef. Unfortunately, both Danyal’s strict father and crush Kaval see this career path as beneath him, and instead want him to take the more traditional route of going to college and choosing a lucrative career. In Danyal’s world, nothing matters more than how others perceive you, and if he hopes to win Kaval, he might have to set his dreams aside.
When Danyal is chosen by his history professor to be a Renaissance Man (a prestigious academic competition led by the school’s teachers), he realizes he might just have the chance he’s been waiting for. Desperate, Danyal seeks the help of the incredibly smart and funny Bisma, who is hiding her own dark secrets. As Danyal digs deeper and deeper into Winston Churchill, the subject of his essay, he realizes that history isn’t nearly as neat and tidy as textbooks make it out to be. At the same time, Danyal begins to learn more and more about Bisma, making him question everything he thought he knew about love, life, and religion. He is then torn between following his heart, or following the status quo.
I feel like I say this often about the books I read, but I honestly don’t know where to begin with this book. The characters are so wonderful and relatable, and I really sympathized with every one of them. I may not have been raised Muslim, but I relate strongly to Danyal’s desire to make his parents proud. I, too, was held to incredibly high standards of conservative parents, and faced the constant anxiety of not being good enough or making the right grades.
I also sympathized with Bisma, a girl whose one mistake led her to being blackmailed by a guy she thought she could trust. Add to that our extremely patriarchal society, and Bisma’s hopes for the future are dashed in an instant. Having experienced the trials of womanhood my entire life, I immediately sympathized with Bisma. While I have never had nudes or a sex tape leaked against my will, society has a way of making even the most wholesome, innocent girl feel terrible about herself for “enticing men” or “acting like a slut.” The way her father and others treated her in this book infuriated me, and I wanted so badly for her to find happiness in the end.
Along with the characters, I also found myself really enjoying the plot of this book. There are essentially two main plots happening as this story progresses: Danyal is researching and practicing for his Renaissance Man speech, while also trying to reconcile his conflicting feelings about Kaval and Bisma. I will address the Renaissance Man plot first, as I think it has the most powerful message in the book. Danyal is asked by his professor to write his essay on Winston Churchill. Initially, Danyal finds this to be a boring topic, but realizes as he’s researching that Churchill was an extremely problematic historical figure. Danyal knows that his teacher loves Churchill, but also feels like it would be wrong to ignore the darker side of Churchill’s history in his essay, which led the people of India to the worst famine they had ever seen. He knows what Kaval and his father want him to do (stick to the positives and get a good grade), but his heart is telling him otherwise.
There are a number of great messages to be found in this plot, from history being more gray than black or white, to choosing not to stand by in the face of injustice. Danyal’s friend Sohrab represents an extreme version of his point of view, choosing to focus only on the injustices rather than the positives in the world. Kaval, on the other hand, would rather ignore all injustice to protect the status quo, which keeps her in a position of relative comfort and power. In the end, Danyal learns that the right answer lies somewhere in between these two extremes, and that the world is not all good or all bad. By ignoring the atrocities committed throughout history, however, we are dooming ourselves to repeat them, so Danyal urges his classmates to take a stand wherever they see injustice happening. He is rewarded with the approval of both his teacher and his father, somewhat uniting the two factions that have been warring inside him throughout the novel.
The other plot, and the one that touched me the most, was the plot involving Danyal, Bisma, and Kaval. At the beginning of the novel, Danyal is obsessed with Kaval, his best friend’s sister and someone he feels to be entirely out of his league. Her family is wealthy, she’s beautiful, and she makes incredibly good grades, making her completely unattainable. His parents, attempting to set him up with a more reasonable prospect, introduce him to Bisma, a girl who also seems to be out of his league at first. While Bisma is extremely funny and intelligent, she is hiding a dark secret: after getting drunk and sleeping with a guy at a party, Bisma found out that the guy not only took a video of the incident, but spread it everywhere, causing everyone in her highly religious community to shun her. Bisma is devastated when she meets Danyal, knowing she will never find a husband within her faith because she is now “tainted” by her sin.
Though shocked by this news, Danyal chooses to befriend Bisma anyways, recruiting her help in writing his essay. As he gets to know her, Danyal begins to see Bisma as an incredible person who was betrayed in the worst way by someone she trusted, and hates the way her father and society treat her because of it. Bisma turns out to be far more supportive than Kaval, encouraging Danyal’s dreams to be a chef and barring him from calling himself stupid in her presence. Kaval, on the other hand, wants Danyal to fit a specific mold: make good grades, go to college, and get a high-paying job as a doctor or lawyer so he can support her financially. She calls him stupid constantly, and belittles his dreams and feelings at every turn.
In this way, Bisma and Kaval are foils for what a healthy relationship looks like as opposed to an unhealthy one. Danyal learns that finding someone who understands and supports him is far better than a pretty face, and in doing so learns to acknowledge his own worth as he chooses to follow his dream. Danyal himself is an excellent lesson on how to love and appreciate your strengths, rather than putting yourself down for your failures, as the title of this novel implies. In the end, Danyal realizes he is smart, insightful, caring, witty, and a damn good cook, and decides to pursue his passions despite what others have chosen for him.
Along with the commentary on history, prejudice, and purity culture, there is also a great deal of commentary about religion. This is done primarily through Danyal’s friend Sohrab, who follows his religion to almost extreme standards, chastising his friends for refusing to do the same. Just as he’s beginning to take his religion to concerning extremes, Danyal sits him down and reminds him that there is more to life than religion. Sohrab, like many other young fundamentalists, sees religion almost as his entire identity, and is unsure of who he is without it.
With Danyal’s help, Sohrab is able to calm his fundamentalist beliefs, learning to see life as more than just praying and following an ancient set of rules. In the end, he even encourages Danyal to keep pursuing Bisma, seeing love as more important than anything she might’ve done in her past (which made me really like him as a supportive friend character). The novel takes an overall respectful tone towards religion, but uses Sohrab as an example of what might be lost if one takes religion too far. This comes full circle with Danyal argues his case against his and Bisma’s parents, reminding them that it is the content of one’s character that truly counts, not their misdeeds. As someone who was raised Christian, it took me a long time to realize that religion, much like everything else in life, is not black and white. One mistake should not define us as human beings, and there are far more productive ways to spend our lives than judging others for their misdeeds, as it is not our place to condemn them. It was refreshing to see a young adult novel tackle this complex idea, and I would hope it encourages young fundamentalists to question some of the harmful lessons religion has taught them.
Lastly, I’ll discuss some of the minor characters I really enjoyed, my favorite of whom was Danyal’s mentor Chef Brodeur. Throughout the novel, she acts as a confidante to the young cook, offering him advice and encouragement during some of his worst moments. She is patient, kind, and caring, giving him tough love when he needs it and encouraging him to take mental breaks occasionally. We also find out later on that she is a lesbian, and it is mentioned so subtlely that one might miss if it they weren’t reading carefully. While I love intentional LGBT representation, I love casual representation just as much. Despite his religion, Danyal does not react negatively to the idea that his female mentor loves women, and he continues to respect her and take her advice. I absolutely loved her, and I think all young people deserve a mentor like her.
I also really enjoyed the friendship between Danyal, Sohrab, and Intezar, as all three were vastly different and still maintained a close friendship. Sohrab and Intezar were almost exact opposites, with Sohrab being incredibly religious and Intezar being incredibly laidback. Both, however, are extremely kind and supportive friends to Danyal, allowing him to confide in them while offering occasional advice. Just as I think it’s important for girls to have strong friendships in YA, I think it’s important to see guys with these strong friendships as well. Doing so removes some of the stigma around men showing emotions to their male friends, furthering the message that toxic masculinity and patriarchal culture is damaging to everyone. I also love that, in the end, Sohrab is able to set aside his religious beliefs to support and listen to his friend, which (as I said before), really sold him as a character for me.
All of the relationships in this book were fantastic, from the romance to the friendships. Even Danyal’s strained relationship with his dad has a satisfying conclusion, as his dad learns to accept him for who he is and take pride in his son’s compassion and courage. As someone who has a strained relationship with my own parents at times, this made me tear up. There are simply far too many wonderful messages and themes in this book to count, so I’ll say this: this is the kind of book I wish I’d had in high school. Not only does it demystify Muslim and Indian cultures, but it invites the reader into this world full of relatable, extremely human characters, and asks us to step in their shoes for a little while.
It is impossible to walk away from this book without feeling empathy for the plights of these characters, and for ethnic minorities in general, many of whom still experience extreme prejudice in our country today. I would encourage any fan of realistic fiction (especially romance) to read this, as it is truly an excellent conversation starter for many important topics, and really invites readers to examine their own inherent biases and prejudices as they read. I applaud Masood for this incredibly touching, funny, and poignant work of art, and I look forward to seeing what he’ll write in the future.
Reference:
Masood, S. (2020). More than just a pretty face. New York: Little Brown and Company.
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