Recently, I saw someone speaking online about how they like to pair books together, which I think is a really lovely idea. In the video, they were talking about pairing a fiction book with a non-fiction book that deeper explores the themes in the former. But I can also see a place for double fiction pairings as long as they have enough of a distinction between them (in this case, historical versus contemporary fiction).

I was reading Yasmin Zaher’s The Coin, and with the idea of pairing planted in my mind, I realised that it had quite a few similarities to another book I had read recently. It got me thinking more critically about how they were similar and how they differed, and that both improved my reading experience and evolved into me having this essay to write about them as a duo.

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark and The Coin by Yasmin Zaher

Both of these books center around a peculiar teacher who is striving for status to mask their sense of loss.
Jean Brodie lost her youth and purpose as a woman who reached her prime in an era where there were very few men around in the wake of WWI. In a society where a woman’s value, security, and indicator of success comes from being a wife, despite her qualities, she gets judged as a spinster. She seeks new purpose by guiding the students who she can see the potential to influence.
The narrator of The Coin is a Palestinian woman living in New York who has lost her sense of home and safety, having to move to another country to live the type of life she wants. She seeks to flaunt her wealth to combat being judged as a refugee and to maintain some autonomy.

As a result of these traumas, both teachers look to exercise their autonomy. Both teachers are quite lonely and lost, and their students offer up clean slates that accept their authority rather than judging them. They both overstep the boundaries of their teacher-student relationships in terms of what they see as their responsibility to teach young people about, and to different degrees, they also manipulate the social dynamics of their students.
The Coin‘s narrator also pursues superiority outside of the classroom – in her relationships, sex, friendships, hygiene, and wealth – while Brodie’s society does not offer women the same independence.

They are both unexpectedly betrayed by a child, and these experiences lead to their undoing – both of their curated egos and their careers as teachers.

It was really interesting to think about the relationship between these two women who are charismatically trying to combat judgement and tragedy and take control of their lives. They both have a lot of value but struggle to share that with the people around them in a way that truly connects.

Definitely looking forward to reading more books in pairs and seeing where the thought rabbit holes lead me!