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4.29 AVERAGE
4.29 AVERAGE
dark
informative
reflective
sad
emotional
informative
sad
tense
medium-paced
dark
emotional
informative
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Stunned and heartbroken as I’m typing this review. An extremely powerful novella, based on a real event, that powerfully depicts the fragility of a displaced people’s history and how it can so easily be destroyed or manipulated by their colonialist occupiers. If, like me, you wanted to learn more about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict but storytelling resonates more profoundly than historical events presented systematically/factually, I couldn’t recommend this one more strongly.
One year after the Nakba, the catastrophe that expelled 700,000 Palestinians from their homeland, Israeli soldiers capture and rape a young Palestinian woman before killing her. It's an event that one could consider to be 'minor' relative to the scale and frequency of the crimes committed against the Palestinian people to this day, and yet our narrator in the second half of the book becomes fixated on this 'minor detail' of history. Her journey to discover more about this event exposes the reality of Palestinians living under Israeli occupation, the trauma that comes with living a life that will strip you of your basic freedoms.
What might come as a shock to the average reader is the nonchalance in the narrator as she discusses common occurrences when living under the occupation; the way she describes the bothersome nature of the dust settling on her desk when the building next to her is bombed; how the noise of sirens and guns have to compete with the sound of a dog's bark. "The situation has been like this for such a long time that there aren't many people alive today who remember little details about what life was like before all this." And yet the anxiety is underlying in the tone throughout, the panic of trying to cross through checkpoints, the constant borders that one has to cross to simply live a life under this occupation - "military ones, geographical ones, physical ones, mental ones, physical ones."
This book is just over 100 pages but is layered with such depth and complexity that my review simply cannot begin to cover the scope of what this book achieves. History is systematically erased, whether that be through the the erasure of Palestinian villages from maps, or the narrative that is told around the young girl's murder that's different to the reality; but no matter how much the oppressor attempts to erase, the past will always continue to haunt the present, shown through smells and sounds described in the first half asserting their presence in the second half. Every sentence of this book and its structure is filled with intention and purpose. Despite its harrowing subject matter, this is an absolute must-read, entirely worthy of the praise it receives.
What might come as a shock to the average reader is the nonchalance in the narrator as she discusses common occurrences when living under the occupation; the way she describes the bothersome nature of the dust settling on her desk when the building next to her is bombed; how the noise of sirens and guns have to compete with the sound of a dog's bark. "The situation has been like this for such a long time that there aren't many people alive today who remember little details about what life was like before all this." And yet the anxiety is underlying in the tone throughout, the panic of trying to cross through checkpoints, the constant borders that one has to cross to simply live a life under this occupation - "military ones, geographical ones, physical ones, mental ones, physical ones."
This book is just over 100 pages but is layered with such depth and complexity that my review simply cannot begin to cover the scope of what this book achieves. History is systematically erased, whether that be through the the erasure of Palestinian villages from maps, or the narrative that is told around the young girl's murder that's different to the reality; but no matter how much the oppressor attempts to erase, the past will always continue to haunt the present, shown through smells and sounds described in the first half asserting their presence in the second half. Every sentence of this book and its structure is filled with intention and purpose. Despite its harrowing subject matter, this is an absolute must-read, entirely worthy of the praise it receives.
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
emotional
reflective
sad
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
very slow and sad and heartbreaking. I enjoyed the second half a lot more, when the perspective shifts to that of the woman. the first half felt very monotonous, which the very descriptive and detailed writing underlined even more, but this also made every drag out so much. I suppose this might have been intentional, to show the monotonous daily life of these solders but it felt a bit tiresome to read after a while. The second half I really enjoyed and I am interested to see what else the author has written.