When your back's against the wall

NYC's affordability crisis takes center stage in “The Uproar,” The Ink Book Club's third monthly pick.

In our last post, we asked you to ponder the vagaries of performative goodness, a syndrome that Sharif, the protagonist of Karim Dimechkie’s The Uproar, clearly suffers from. Reader Susan Kilber gave us her take, which is representative of what many of you thought: “I don’t think Sharif is just trying to be good for performative purposes. I think he is definitely wired for doing work that helps people who are struggling.” Rebecca Clough—a book club member who works as a therapist—invoked Carl Jung, commenting that “all of us have a dark/shadow side” —Sharif included. While some of you were frustrated by Sharif’s other personality traits—his vacillating, equivocating, and defensiveness—you also gave him credit for trying to do the right thing. Which proves we are a compassionate community of readers!

In The Uproar, Dimechkie wrestles with multiple additional themes, among them, how a person will respond when put to the test. For example, Sharif and his wife, Adjoua, are about to have a baby, and know in advance that she will be born with leukemia. (Not a spoiler, as that fact is revealed in the novel’s first few pages.) In addition to the couple’s understandable fear for what they and their daughter will face, they are also acutely aware that they are in unexplored territory financially, given the cost of health care. They already live on a shoestring, as Sharif’s social worker salary is modest, and Adjoua is a freelancer. They have zero room for, say, Sharif to lose his job, which, after a video of an altercation he’s involved in goes viral, could well happen. The resulting tension strains their marriage to the breaking point.

We will meet for our first discussion of The Uproar with the Book Club this week, on Wednesday, July 9th at 12:30 p.m. Eastern, on Substack Live. And for our Book Club members, we’ve got some questions below to get you thinking in advance of our meeting.

---

---