a place for us is such an intricate and complex story about family, love, expectations, and how we can so easily push each other away. the story revolves around a muslim indian american family and touches on many topics from growing up between cultures, to the children aiming to please their parents (and one of them really failing) by living up to their expectations (mainly strict religious expectations) and what i think the author, Fatima Farheen Mirza did really well was portraying how complex family dynamics can be, and how as an individual you are affected by your family and how you almost 'adapt' and act differently with each person. it was also interesting to see how she was able to show from multiple perspectives how certain events were regarded, how characters and their opinions of events and each other evolved, and what struck me the most was coming to understand the father, Rafiq's, position and seeing his transformation - how what seemed to be callous and harsh treatment to his son in the end became so understanding (and remorseful of the past)

i think for me a big message i took from this story was how our self imposed ideas and expectations can sometimes push us so far away from someone and how we might eventually find that our 'ideals' and the measuring stick we had set up was not as universal and black and white as we had thought. a big theme of the book is religion, and how the son, Amar, was unable to live up to the standards and buy into the way that his family viewed their religion (which i am not saying can be overlooked necissarily) - but how in the end Rafiq ends up coming to the realization that yes, Amar was unable to follow and live up to the most 'concrete' and measurable standards of being a 'good muslim' but he was always 'kind, considerate, and compassionate' to everyone around him - and that helps to put into perspective how what is most easily measured/seen does not always accurately portray how a person is - it is so much easier to make decisions based off of things easily seen (drinking alcohol, smoking, going to church) but how much harder it is to measure how kind someone is to those around them, how hard they might work at being compassionate, at being loving - and at the end of the day, aren't those the things that will matter the most?

speaking about the book specifically, it took me a second to get into the writing and figure out the way the story was moving. the book opens with a wedding, the oldest daughter, Hadia, getting married and Amar, the estranged son whom they haven't in three years, coming to make an appearance. the rest of the books proceeds to talk about the past and how they ended up at this point, specifically revolving around the story of Amar. it jumps around a lot between characters who are narrating and the timeline of events, but it eventually starts to make sense.
especially enjoyed part 4, the last part of the book, which was told from the dad's perspective (talking to Amar) the story really came into perspective and it helps to sympathize more with the father and understand the decisions he made (and make him look like less of a bad guy - HELLO AMIRA ALI) and why he might have acted in those sorts of ways. it was really heartbreaking, yet beautiful at the same time, to hear him explain the story through his eyes, and eventually coming to understand where his son was coming from and learning to accept him (and realizing that he had been wrong in the way he treated him and reacted), but you wonder if he might have been 'too late' and it was sad to think that he would never get back the lost time and might never even get a second chance.