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4.26 AVERAGE
4.26 AVERAGE
medium-paced
Really enjoyed, and wish I knew more about the Israel/Palestine conflict and that area of the world. Such an interesting concept and made me think a lot about theatre as resistance.
Enter Ghost is narrated by main character Sonia, who is on an extended holiday in Palestine (where her father was born and raised) to escape from her messy London life after a divorce and then an affair with a married man. She is lost, and through the story, finds her footing again, through a theatre production that she reluctantly (at first!) became involved with. The story effortlessly weaves in a difficult but loving relationship with her sister, value of the arts, and daily life with political occupation. It's beautifully written to make the non-familiar reader work for the story, linguistically and geographically.
dark
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
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
challenging
dark
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
A story on politics, the arts, and culture. Ties in modern day Palestine with the play, Hamlet and wow. This adds a lot of context to what is currently going on and provides a perspective that many people will never have - and Hammad encapsulates human emotion and self awareness so well
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
tense
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
stunning
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A Palestinian British actress suffers an upset in her personal life and decides to visit her sister in Haifa for an extended stay. Although her stay in Israel is intended to be brief and uneventful, when she joins a production of Hamlet in the West Bank she finds herself grappling with her family history, with the reality of the occupation, and the new dimensions the play takes when acted by Palestinians.
This novel is set in 2017, but the contemporary context hovered over me as I read it, charging it with even deeper meaning. Sonia, the narrator, a political naif and someone who has desperately tried to avoid thinking about Palestine, is a tangle of contradictions as she tries to sort out her feelings about Haifa, where she spent summers growing up. Other characters express their frustration over the classic symbology of Palestinian narratives, and the difficulty of creating art under occupation: "I'm just so bored by it all. The symbols. The keys, the kuffiyehs -- I mean, is this all we have? Olive trees? Is this really all we have?"
But this isn't just a political novel, or a novel about art. Sonia's relationship with her sister is the heart of the novel and they struggle to relate to each other. Sonia travels on a British passport, Haneen on an Israeli as she commutes to Tel Aviv, and the gulf between them sometimes seems like it can't be traversed, due to the difference between Sonia's life in London and Haneen's reality as an Arab Israeli -- "It also distressed me to notice that the reality of this kind of news, or at least my sense of its reality, had been increased by geographic closeness. It felt like a throwback to the intifada summers of our adolescence." Nevertheless, in striking interludes they draw closer together, despite "the long frail story of our sisterhood, and all the petty crimes committed, the crosshatching of intention and advantage and betrayal."
I also want to commend Hammad's prose style. It takes exemplary command of style to be able to switch from prose to entire chapters written in stageplay format, both of which add to the scenes they contain and feel completely natural. This is a virtuoso performance for a novel, and I can't recommend it enough.
---
A Palestinian British actress suffers an upset in her personal life and decides to visit her sister in Haifa for an extended stay. Although her stay in Israel is intended to be brief and uneventful, when she joins a production of Hamlet in the West Bank she finds herself grappling with her family history, with the reality of the occupation, and the new dimensions the play takes when acted by Palestinians.
This novel is set in 2017, but the contemporary context hovered over me as I read it, charging it with even deeper meaning. Sonia, the narrator, a political naif and someone who has desperately tried to avoid thinking about Palestine, is a tangle of contradictions as she tries to sort out her feelings about Haifa, where she spent summers growing up. Other characters express their frustration over the classic symbology of Palestinian narratives, and the difficulty of creating art under occupation: "I'm just so bored by it all. The symbols. The keys, the kuffiyehs -- I mean, is this all we have? Olive trees? Is this really all we have?"
But this isn't just a political novel, or a novel about art. Sonia's relationship with her sister is the heart of the novel and they struggle to relate to each other. Sonia travels on a British passport, Haneen on an Israeli as she commutes to Tel Aviv, and the gulf between them sometimes seems like it can't be traversed, due to the difference between Sonia's life in London and Haneen's reality as an Arab Israeli -- "It also distressed me to notice that the reality of this kind of news, or at least my sense of its reality, had been increased by geographic closeness. It felt like a throwback to the intifada summers of our adolescence." Nevertheless, in striking interludes they draw closer together, despite "the long frail story of our sisterhood, and all the petty crimes committed, the crosshatching of intention and advantage and betrayal."
I also want to commend Hammad's prose style. It takes exemplary command of style to be able to switch from prose to entire chapters written in stageplay format, both of which add to the scenes they contain and feel completely natural. This is a virtuoso performance for a novel, and I can't recommend it enough.
This is a book I have not been able to stop thinking about since I finished it. The title is perfect, as there is a haunted quality about it, and it also connects with the presence of the play Hamlet in the plot. From an educational perspective, I really appreciated the different layers of Palestinian identity represented in the characters, as readers can see how the diaspora plays out and figures in people’s daily lives and minds. Besides that, I just want to say that this is a truly beautiful book from a writing perspective. I finished it and immediately wanted to read it again. Could not recommend more strongly.
The build up and release of the last few pages was excellent.
4.5 stars. The downside of reading books from the library is that I can't underline great lines as I come across them, and there were so many. But here's one from towards the end that I loved. It's not the most profound, or the most dramatic, but wow, it struck a chord with me.
"Cynicism is easy in hindsight, to say Oh, but it wasn't real. I don't know what makes a feeling real."
"Cynicism is easy in hindsight, to say Oh, but it wasn't real. I don't know what makes a feeling real."