Book Beginnings: Scent of Butterflies by Dora Levy Mossanen

Book Beginnings on Fridays hosted by Rose City Reader, where bloggers share the first sentence or more of a current read, as well as initial thoughts about the sentence(s), impressions of the book, or anything else that the opening inspires.

I'm on Air France, destined for Los Angeles. Fleeing Aziz, my husband of twenty years, the man I married when I was fifteen. The only lover I've ever known. He believes that I will return to him. I will not. Why? Because I can't resist his drunken eyes, velvet words, and persuasive hands that know where to press softly and where to stroke hard, where to linger and where to slither away, where to cup and hold and warm.

And I won't return because I can't free myself from Parvaneh.

Title: Scent of Butterflies 
 Author: Dora Levy Mossanen
ISBN: 9781402284434
Publisher: Sourcebooks Landmark/2014
Pages: 282

It is 1999. Soraya is a wealthy Jewish Iranian, with blond hair and  green eyes.  She has left behind her husband in Iran and flown to Los Angeles. Unknown to Aziz, she does not intend to return to him. She thinks her best friend, Parvaneh and Aziz are lovers. She had seen them together in intimate position.

Aziz thinks she is visiting US on a photographic assignment and would be back soon. We see Soraya musing about her life in Iran in the post Shah era. Her love and obsession for Aziz, so much so that she has been on the pill all these time as she does not want to share her husband with anyone not even their children. 

Soraya buys a mansion in Bel Air which has a huge garden in the back. She is into collecting butterflies and growing exotic plants. When she is not thinking about her husband, she is thinking about plants and insects. Her best friend, Parvaneh's name means "butterfly"  and Soraya  thinks only of revenge, and punishment for Parveneh. 

When Aziz and Parveneh visit her, she comes to know about a hidden truth which totally breaks the thread for all her relationships. Soraya is not a likable character. She is unstable and obsessive. When Aziz discovers about her being on the pill, it breaks him apart. She had always gone to all kinds of fertility clinic for him.