Painting Kuwait Violet by Pamela Q Fernandes – Review by Sarah Oakes

Painting Kuwait Violet by Pamela Q. Fernandes
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A great read about the unexpected. Violet is a finance graduate looking for work and to pay off her fathers debts. She sets off from Goa to Kuwait to work as a maid for Sabah Dashti in hopes of a better future. Struggling barriers of a different language and food, Violet finds her feet but mysterious events start to happen in the house and dangers lurk nearby. But will Violet discover if Kuwait truly is a paradise?
A great read. Well developed plot with twists and turns. The use of suspense was done to perfection with small strange events as you kept reading to find out why girls kept leaving. Well developed characters like Violet staying kind hearted despite hardships or Sabah keeping a brave face as a mother despite the allegations. Great supporting cast of different personalities like the stubborn Tintin or the curious child Aliya or the intimidating Rauf making the novel full of life and people with bustling lives.
A great example of bildungsroman as Violet finds her feet and grows as a person through her experiences in life. A brilliant example of celebrating another culture with love and care towards Asian language and culture and religion and food and dress throughout the novel which was a lovely touch. I also loved this aspect of the imagery in the novel with the dry desert and hot air of Kuwait as a hard place but also beautiful. The only issue I would raise is that it seemed slow paced and large amounts of characters was sometimes hard to keep track of. Overall, a great read and I would give it four stars.

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