Reviews with content warning for Suicidal thoughts - Evil Eye

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Reviews tagging 'Suicidal thoughts'

Evil Eye by Etaf Rum

105 reviews

campisforever's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional hopeful informative sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

This book is a really, really difficult one in which to get immersed if you're not into internal or cerebral plots (like me). It's also an honest, raw look into generational trauma, complex PTSD (C-PTSD), depression, and suicidal ideation. That said, Evil Eye is gorgeously written and well worth it. It took me quite a while to get through (a few days over six months) because I had to pick it up and put it down several times. The only thing that really worked for me was transitioning to listening to it on Spotify and tracking the reading with the pages in my physical copy. Making this change helped me, as a highly visual person, take a small step back from having to experience the raw feelings of the novel and gave me breathing room to react. Once I was able to get that room, I appreciated the story much more.

For the question about whether I found the characters loveable I said "It's complicated." Let me explain:

I love Yara deeply, I love Mira and Jude, and I love Silas and Josephine. I had strong reactions to Fadi, his family, and Yara's family in many ways, but to say they weren't "loveable" wouldn't necessarily be fair, since that's the point of the whole book. I think a fairer way to put it is that I was frustrated by how Fadi, etc., just wouldn't listen to Yara when Yara was working so hard on herself.

Also, if you're an academic, the first third might be frustrating, but it will pass, I promise. In general, I think that if you have the patience to give this book time, it will give what it needs to. In the end I was genuinely moved, but it's not something I would recommend blindly.

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thunderling's review against another edition

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dark emotional hopeful reflective tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

god, this book...i finished it in one day. this book made me feel everything. i was angry about 70% of the time because the gaslighting was doing my head in. but that's the sign of a good author because golly does she make you feel.

i'm not one for character-driven books because i find that the plot usually falls on the wayside but etaf rum does a wonderful job by exploring yara's journey. the writing is beautiful but not too flowery so it didn't fall flat. i was so invested in yara's journey and i didn't understand why people said it was boring. perhaps because i relate so heavily to yara's identity!

my one tiny critique is that i wish the whole situation about the trip was less insistent. i think if etaf rum had shown how

fadi isn't emotionally invested in his wife's interests some other way

that would have been more impactful. but honestly, it's not major that i would lessen my rating.

i also wish we got more of silas! i thoroughly enjoyed his friendship with yara.

it's definitely a book that will stay with me for a looong time. definitely gonna read a woman is no man next!

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lilawsahar's review against another edition

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challenging emotional hopeful reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.75

Yara’s story was really relatable as a second generation middle eastern immigrant. My family is also worried about reputation and remembering the privilege we have in America that my dad didn’t have. That pressure is a heavy burden to carry. This book made me feel seen.

I’m glad Yara was able to get the help she needed and build the support system to leave her husband. She deserves to break the trauma cycle and be happy.
<spoiler/>

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aishallnot's review against another edition

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challenging emotional hopeful reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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cody_crumley's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

“Who cares what the world sees if you can’t even stand to look at yourself?”

This might be one of the hardest reviews I have had to write for a bookclub book in a while. This book hit me emotionally in a place that I have not visited since my father died.

The way that Etaf Rum’s writing handles the descriptions of mental health and associated themes like micro and macro aggressions that the main character Yara has thrown at her. The way the author describes intergenerational family trauma. A lot of books that try to focus on mental health themes like they miss the finer details or only graze the surface. The fact that Rum is able to paint in the grey area with such delicate touches, like being able to show Yara’s mother as both a terrible victim of mental/physical abuse from her husband but also a perpetrator of mental abuse to Yara as a child.

Yara and Fadi’s marriage has a lot of similarities to my parents marriage. Two people who probably should not have gotten married, rushed into a relationship/marriage because of outside influences and circumstances. Every dialogue conversation between Fadi and Yara, like when Yara asked him to help with cleaning up transported me back to when I was a child and the same conversation would have between them.

The overall depiction of mental health was stellar. The interaction with Yara and the first counselor, which does a wonderful job of portraying the gender dynamics when the therapist is male and the patient is female. The journey Yara goes on through this book to stop blaming herself for what happened during her childhood while actually sitting with her emotions is extremely powerful and should be required reading for anyone that has similar problems.

I also think reading this book right now is more important than ever because what is happening to Palestine via the genocide perpetrated by Israel. This looks into the cultural trauma that a Palestinian-American can go through, not being able to go back to where they are from because of human atrocities delivered by an entire country is sickening.

While I don’t think that everyone who reads this will be impacted like I was, I still would recommend this book to everyone because of the subject matter and it’s current relevance to the current situation in Palestine.

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dragongirl271's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional hopeful reflective sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

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theboricuabookworm's review against another edition

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emotional inspiring fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

I knew this book was going to wreck me, especially after reading A Woman is No Man but reading this, which followed many of the same themes but also many new ones of A Woman is No Man, was such a emotional rollercoaster. I'm going to need everyone to pick up a book by Etaf Rum (preferably all of them). The way that Etaf can create a story of women, especially daughters of immigrants, who come from a background of such pain and grief is something I think everyone needs to experience. Her works are literally indescribable.

Yara, I saw so much of myself in her. How her anxiety would manifest, how once she gave words to what was she feeling, only then was she able to start on her journey of healing and acceptance. I'm so glad that even though Yara had poor therapy experiences prior to Esther, she did not let that dissuade her from going back and trying again and realizing the importance of having someone to talk to. When Esther said: "There is no hierarchy of pain when it comes to traumatic experiences." I wanted to reach into the book and hug her. She was not the perfect therapist but she is one that helped Yara come to terms with how she had been living her life until that point and how she can make it better for herself and her daughters.

Every time someone asked if she had someone she could talk to or rely on and she would reply in the negative was such a gut punch. That loneliness is so visceral and it crept up on her before she knew it. But how she became more open to letting people in, even unwittingly at first, had me smiling through my tears.

I know my words and review will never be able to do justice to the way Etaf wove such a heartbreaking yet restorative story of breaking generational cycles and realizing that while you have such immense privilege that others prior to you and adjacent to you do not, you are still valid in your feelings and your grief.

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nithya_natalya's review against another edition

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emotional reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Trying to read more books by Palestinian authors, and this one showed up on a few lists of recs. I'm not normally a literary fiction fan, so I struggled through this. So much of this book is Yara's inner thoughts, and not a lot of plot. Normally, I would hate that. However, I'm giving it 4 stars though because it made me cry multiple times, and the fact that it brought such strong emotions at me means it was doing something right. I saw myself and my family in Yara's experience. I also am a sucker for storylines involving platonic love, and there was a great friendship in this.

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arand's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful inspiring reflective sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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jennireadsmaybe's review against another edition

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challenging emotional reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

How do I write a review for Evil Eye? How do I capture how much this book means to me?

Evil Eye follows Yara, a Palestinian American woman, who after marrying and leaving her conservative family behind in Brooklyn is seemingly living the dream. She's gotten to do everything that her mother never could. She's working at a local college, married to a nice man, and raising her two daughters. Everything's great. Except it doesn't feel like enough.

Etaf Rum is a forced to be reckoned with; there's no other way to put it. Evil Eye explores generational trauma, motherhood, depression, friendship, and the deeply personal desire to be loved by the people around us. It's a hard read, but a necessary one in my opinion.

There were so many lines throughout the book that were a punch in the gut. Rum's writing is at once beautiful and harrowing, but I never find myself lost by it.

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