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4.26 AVERAGE
4.26 AVERAGE
dark
funny
reflective
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
a big side effect of the occupation...is traffic jams
enter ghost really elicited some deep emotions in a way I was really not expecting, and needing to take time to deal with that and get through it is the only reason it took me so long to finish this. it seems basic to say, but sonia's perspective in the context of the current genocide is a potent reminder of how simultaneously long and recent the occupation of palestine is. there are a few areas where I wanted more, but it did seem deliberate not to give it to us. the inevitable ending did not make it any less impactful, although a few choices started to pull me out of the book in a way that felt a little sloppy and rushed (which is maybe deliberate).
enter ghost really elicited some deep emotions in a way I was really not expecting, and needing to take time to deal with that and get through it is the only reason it took me so long to finish this. it seems basic to say, but sonia's perspective in the context of the current genocide is a potent reminder of how simultaneously long and recent the occupation of palestine is. there are a few areas where I wanted more, but it did seem deliberate not to give it to us. the inevitable ending did not make it any less impactful, although a few choices started to pull me out of the book in a way that felt a little sloppy and rushed (which is maybe deliberate).
slow-paced
dark
emotional
funny
informative
medium-paced
Content Warnings
Moderate: Miscarriage
When I heard this novel was about a production of Hamlet in the West Bank, I was sold. I still did not expect it to play out the way it did.
It was slow moving yet tense, the ending really got me. The last line too. Theatre is such an effective imitation of life, and vice versa. I liked it throughout, but the last third was particularly effective.
I’ve been speed reading a lot of books recently but really had to slow down here.
I don’t know what to say. I’m going to need to process this some more.
I loved the script segments. It’s what really made it for me.
Yeah I need more time to think. But read it!!!!
——
Not a comprehensive list, but a couple quotes that stuck out. (Spoiling some good lines, but not the plot).
“Nothing is more flattering to an artist than the illusion that he is a secret revolutionary.”
“Haneen once compared Palestine to an exposed part of an electronic network, where someone has cut the rubber coating with a knife to show the wires and currents underneath. She probably didn’t say that exactly, but that was the image she had brought into my mind. That this place revealed something about the whole world.”
“When you read a novel about the occupation and feel understood, or watch a film and feel seen, your anger, which is like a wound, is dressed for a brief time and you can go on enduring, a bit more easily, and so time goes on running like an open faucet and each film at the cultural centre ends and we applaud as the credits roll with the list of crests of institutional donors…. you might feel a kind of flowering in the chest at this sight of your community’s resistance embalmed in art, some beauty created out of despair, all of this means that in the end you… are less likely to fight the fight because despair has been relieved.”
It was slow moving yet tense, the ending really got me. The last line too. Theatre is such an effective imitation of life, and vice versa. I liked it throughout, but the last third was particularly effective.
I’ve been speed reading a lot of books recently but really had to slow down here.
I don’t know what to say. I’m going to need to process this some more.
I loved the script segments. It’s what really made it for me.
Yeah I need more time to think. But read it!!!!
——
Not a comprehensive list, but a couple quotes that stuck out. (Spoiling some good lines, but not the plot).
“Nothing is more flattering to an artist than the illusion that he is a secret revolutionary.”
“Haneen once compared Palestine to an exposed part of an electronic network, where someone has cut the rubber coating with a knife to show the wires and currents underneath. She probably didn’t say that exactly, but that was the image she had brought into my mind. That this place revealed something about the whole world.”
“When you read a novel about the occupation and feel understood, or watch a film and feel seen, your anger, which is like a wound, is dressed for a brief time and you can go on enduring, a bit more easily, and so time goes on running like an open faucet and each film at the cultural centre ends and we applaud as the credits roll with the list of crests of institutional donors…. you might feel a kind of flowering in the chest at this sight of your community’s resistance embalmed in art, some beauty created out of despair, all of this means that in the end you… are less likely to fight the fight because despair has been relieved.”
emotional
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
medium-paced
Had such good potential to be a great story about culture and identity, but I didn’t like that the play took over most of the storyline…
Content Warnings
spoiler
I enjoy stories told like this, with a diary-like closeness of narrative POV. I think something in the high level of attention to behavior and movement, like I imagine the level of attention that an actor might pay to staging and space, contributes to the undercurrent of tension, where the setting and all the noticed ephemera (?) are laden with meaning while maintaining their mundane nature. The flashbacks get folded into the present more like reflections than cinematic memories preserved in a vault. The characters begin as sketches, biographical details with a vague presence, before the characters either drop away as people do or gradually grow in substance and seeming familiarity as the narrator becomes increasingly aware of them. The ideas of the private life of civilians intertwine with geopolitical histories, meaningless violence, with a sense of the characters careening towards an inevitable ending that I as a reader was only half aware of until the very last moment. (Writing this months after reading)
adventurous
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
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