How to Read the Air by Dinaw Mengestu

Dinaw Mengestu’s second book, How to Read the Air, is the smart, insightful story of a young man, just out of college, trying to make his way in the world. Though lost and confused, he is sure of one thing: to find his own path, he must first piece together the complicated and moving narrative of his immigrant parent’s lives. With stunning realism and intricate attention to detail, it is a measure of Mengestu’s writing skill that this multi-layered tale of a family that suffers many more setbacks than successes leaves the reader with more of a sense of triumph than tragedy. No wonder Mengestu’s name keeps popping up on so many lists of young authors to watch.

How to Read the Air is several stories deftly folded together in space and time with the result that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. First, we follow the son, Jonas, the first person narrator, as he gets his first real job as an instructor in a private school, through his ill-fated marriage to Angela, and then goes on a road trip to “find” his parents. There is the story of Jonas’ father’s arduous, life-threatening emigration to America, and his unhappy, unsuccessful life in the U.S.. Then, there is Jonas’ mother, Mariam, whose courage and intelligence are inspiring. Lastly, there are glimpses into Angela’s troubled early life. These stories are broken up into short sections and, despite being told out of sequence, there is no confusion. In fact, the reader gets to know each of these flawed characters quite well – some are more likable than others – and because of Mengestu’s expert writing the reader gains a clear sense of the arc of their lives.

Mengestu’s writing is straightforward, unadorned prose. What is remarkable about his writing is not stylistic, rather it is his amazing talent for capturing feelings and thoughts that are so “right on.” For example, here is Jonas saying “As soon as I began teaching at the academy I noticed that there was a distinct, almost palpable difference in the general haze through which until then I had conducted my life.” Referring to Jonas’ mother, Mariam, Mengestu writes “It was better, she believed, not to translate emotion into actions, to let them lie dormant, because once they were expressed, there was no drawing them back. They enter the world and having done so become greater than us.” About his father, Jonas says, “All angry men are depressingly the same, and my father was no different. Once he reached the apogee of his fury he had to let loose; this was when things would begin to fly.” These statements absolutely have the ring of truth about them.

How to Read the Air is a book about the necessity and difficulty of relationships. One truth about relationships is how easily blame can take the place of cooperation.

Of the tens of thousands of ways two people can turn against each other, my mother and father were faithful to a handful of words to provide that final spark, chief among them being “you didn’t.” As in, “You didn’t turn down the heat before you went to bed last night.” Or in later years, “You didn’t find a job, a career, a life, a home we could live in, a school to send our son to.” There was always a “you” who had failed to do something and another “you” who never failed to see that. Sometimes I think if they never learned to use the second person singular their lives could have turned out much better.

Jonas is learning how to live by studying his parents’ life together and also from his students. Their gossip and chatter before and after class is eye-opening to him because “My concerns back then [when he was his students’ age] were more private; they primarily involved finding new ways to numb myself so nothing my parents, or by extension the outside world, did could touch me.” Watching his students convinces Jonas that “there is nothing so easily remade as our definitions of ourselves.” Had he been more aware of his classmates when he was in school, Jonas believes that he could have used them as models and become whichever one suited him best.

How to Read the Air vividly captures the agony so many young people go through as their identities form and they try to forge new, adult relationships. It is amazing that someone as young as Mengestu, he is 32, has such clear understanding of these issues and can express them so convincingly. One could do much worse than to use this book as a how-to guide for personal growth. As Jonas says about himself and Angela, “In our rush to presumably better ourselves we had both missed what had otherwise always been obvious – that it often didn’t take much more than careful consideration of each other’s needs to secure a degree of happiness.” Good advice, but as Mengestu makes clear, not an easy thing to do.

Reviewed by Stan Izen

How to Read the Air by Dinaw Mengestu
Riverhead, 2010
Cloth, 320 pp, $25.95
ISBN-13: 9781594487705