So Kara, Bobby, and their friends try to satisfy themselves with tapas, expensive outerwear, and the internet.Īs Bobby becomes more immersed in ManHunt and hook-up apps, Kara thinks: “It was sad watching him enter a solitary existence, but then it also made me feel all the more needed.” This is a touching reflection that reveals the co-dependency inherent to their relationship. Plus, ask anyone: It’s nearly impossible to meet decent guys in LA. They worry they have too much baggage, too much hurt inside their hearts and too many eccentricities. The characters in The Walk-in Closet are fairly certain happiness exists but they struggle to believe it’s attainable for them. “There were two options that seemed available for my life,” she thinks early in the novel, “become a fabulous Persian wife or become one of the girls.” Kara debates marrying her closeted gay friend because even though it won’t be the life she really wants, it will be something and at this point she’s almost ready to settle. In fact, as of late the Ebadis have been pressuring Bobby and Kara to move into a house, get married, and pop out some adorable grandkids. Everyone is working to “maintain the façade,” including the Ebadis’ younger son Babak, who goes by “Bobby” and is Kara’s best friend.Īlthough Bobby spends most of his free time online pursuing hook-ups with men he never wants to see again, he still lets his parents pretend his relationship with Kara is a romantic one.
Of course, it’s not that the Ebadis don’t have problems they’ve simply reached a bearable peace with their problems by never talking about them. They seem to have it all-wealth, glamour, grandiloquent Nowruz parties, and the latest spring/summer ensembles from Prada. Leila and Hossein Ebadi are a leading family in “Tehrangeles,” a contemporary milieu in Los Angeles inhabited by Iranians who immigrated to America after the shah’s overthrow in 1979. But close enough, we learn, is intolerably far from the real thing. On the eve of her thirtieth birthday, still reeling from an old break-up and stuck in a dead-end Hollywood job, Kara is ready to make some compromises if it means she’ll experience something close enough to happiness. Kara Walker-the protagonist of Abdi Nazemian’s first novel The Walk-in Closet-is ready for a new life.
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