Reviews

The Dove's Necklace by Raja Alem

ellenanne101's review

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slow-paced

1.0

tico1021's review against another edition

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1.0

Difficult to follow.

jennms_qkw's review against another edition

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4.0

This is my most challenging book this year. First woman to win the Arabic Prize in Fiction. Prize-winning German translation. 474 pages of emotionally dense and labyrinthine writing. Started in Sept, had to turn it back in to the library because I exhausted renewals, and picked it up again 4 weeks and 2 days ago. 10 pages. So much magical realism, blocks of italic text, so much surrealism (my friends lovingly point out my literalness from time to time). 50 pages. Read a few reviews. 50 more. Thought about reading it every day I wasn't actually reading it. I was at 278p last night and I drew a bath and thought, maybe I will just stay in the tub until I am done. And I did. I am proud that I kept with it, and I did like the book, even though I am still digesting the ending. I will be reading light fiction until the first Sunday of Advent, when I start Dear Church (A Lutheran book).

Additional on this book: The writing is clever and the phrase about fever dream in the description is accurate. I do not read a lot of this kind of literature, but this reminded me of Gabriel García Márquez. The blocks of italic text on 4 solid pages were hard, visually. Maybe I should go to a class to read and understand the symbolism and techniques better.

fuzzyhebrew's review

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challenging slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.0

Will someone please explain this book to me? I really want to like it and I feel like if I can have a summary it will go up in my estimation. But I could not figure out what this book was trying to tell me. There are some really interesting themes about the price of development and becoming prosperous, about what Mecca is and about what is important in life. The mystery I completely did not understand. Someone died, right? Who died? Do Azza and Aisha both exist? if they didn't both exist then who died?? Why did Nasser start working for the guy? I am just confused and I cannot find any explanations. This book was extremely dense and that added to my frustration. 

katie_greenwinginmymouth's review against another edition

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challenging dark mysterious slow-paced

4.5

melbsreads's review

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2.0

Trigger warnings: murder, misogyny, childbirth, death of a child, violence.

Here's the thing: I've been wanting to read this book for a year now, after stumbling across it in Foyles last year. But I didn't have space in my suitcase for it at the time, so I put it on the backburner. Until I saw a copy sitting on the new books shelf at my local library.

The premise sounded SO interesting - a woman's body is found in a laneway in Mecca, and she can't be identified. It's told from the perspective of a bunch of different people, including the street where she's found. Like...WHAT?! That sounds great!!

Uuuuuuunfortunately, this was one of the slowest books I've ever read in my life. The story cuts back and forth between the investigation (most of which was "who is this woman?") and a string of emails from one of the possibly-dead-women to...a person who still remains unknown at the end of the book. Add in the fact that it's a fraction under 500 pages, and I was on the snooze train. Literally. I fell asleep about twenty times while reading this.

I honestly can't work out if it was the writing, the story, or the translation. Maybe a combination of all three?? But yeah. I...didn't love this.

(If it hadn't done such a solid job of portraying Mecca, it would have been a 1 star book, tbh)

elizabethreading's review

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challenging dark mysterious sad tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.25

dgrachel's review

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It's been months since I picked this up. I will try again at a later date and start over from the beginning.

alia0ftheknife's review

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challenging reflective slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

chloehamburn's review against another edition

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5.0

The Dove's Necklace absolutely blew me away. I'll work on a more comprehensive review this coming week, but this is easily my favorite read of the year.