The Rug Merchant

by Meg Mullins

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 012000514X
• ISBN13: 9780120005147
• Release Date: January 2006
• Publisher: Viking
• Weight: 1.30 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Loved it

I adored the Kite Runner and Thousand Splendid Suns, and now I'm trying to plod my way through Reading Lolita in Tehran, and I just needed something more...captivating. Well, I found this book to be a page-turner, and finished it in just two days. The writer does her job well, inasmuch as I felt I was there with Ushman and Stella, seeing what they were seeing, smelling what they were smelling. I really enjoyed the symbolism of the kilim and Ushman's dreams. This book enchanted me, however briefly, and broke my heart, too. It is romantic and exotic without being trashy or preachy. I loved Khaled Hosseini's books and loved this one, too. This is a small book and would pack well into a purse.

Didn't expect to like it so much!

I usually read thrillers such as "The Da Vinci Code" or high-fantasy novels by the likes of George R. R. Martin, and I count "Aliens" as my all-time favorite movie. So, not the type of person who, upon hearing that a book is about an Iranian rug dealer and his relationship with a young American woman, shouts, "Awesome! Bring it on!" Yet circumstances led me to read this book, which I started with some trepidation. (I've been burned occasionally by books with reviews that state, "Well-written," and "true-to-life characters," which can sometimes translate to, "Difficult, hard to chisel through prose," and "boring.") "Well-written" here means an eloquent, fast-moving writing style that effortlessly meshes the interesting, hard-to-predict, and dare I say it, true-to-life characters (in a good way) with subtle truths about human nature that deep down we all know, but since we rarely see them discussed we can't help but smile as we read them. (One tiny example, "Ushman looks at the lighted windows and yearns to be let in. Even if there is no soccer match on TV. Just to sit around a table with people in the middle of the night, their camaraderie heightened by the absurdity of the hour.") For me, this was a page-turner in a far different manner than what I'm used to, but a page-turner nonetheless. Highly recommended (even if you DO have a book about rampaging prehistoric sharks on the top of your Wish List).

A Wonderful, Thoughtful and Emotional Read

This one touched my heart. You can read the plot details in the other reviews ... it was the emotional connection with the character Ushman that surprised me. His loneliness and confusion of his place in his world was so well conveyed, that I felt and understood and related. We all have our sad stories, it's remembering that they all had elements of joy as well. A suprising and strong debut novel.

Rich and moving

This novel is as rich, moving and complex as the rarest handmade carpet which its lonely Iranian protagonist sells. He has grown up with them, and the selling of them takes him away from his much adored wife in Iran to New York City. His wife, made miserable and blaming Ushman for her inability to bear a child to term, refuses to follow him, takes up with a lover and leaves him. But he cannot leave her in his heart, even though he is fascinated by and much loves a young college student who is far from his culture and his melancholy soul. The portrait of Ushman is one of the deepest portraits of a man I have read. I closed the book a few times because I felt I had in decency to look away from the intimacy of his hopes and his pain as he struggles with the strangeness of his new country when all he longs for is his old life. Such a tender man, so complex! What a wonderful book! I will be reading it again soon.

An unlikely romance: conservative Iranian rug merchant and Southern belle

A college student and an Iranian immigrant meet and form an unlikely romance in THE RUG MERCHANT, providing quite a realistic story of a young immigrant who leaves home and wife to start a new life after a terrible earthquake at home - only to find a young American girl from the South sparks a new life in him after he finds his wife at home has been unfaithful to him. A new world opens to a cultured yet repressed conservative rug merchant in this wonderful story of possibilities.