Reviews with content warning for Grief - Home Fire

Reviews tagging 'Grief'

Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie

35 reviews

katrod's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense fast-paced

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

5.0

What an incredibly moving portrayal of two Muslim families navigating faith, grief, love, family, and sacrifice as their worlds collide. Shamsie beautifully weaves together 5 narratives all giving us a different view of the same story. It is shocking, complex, and devastating all while keeping the reader on the edge of their seat and holding out hope. This one is not to miss, but extremely distressing and should be read with caution… there are countless trigger warnings including, but not limited to, Islamophobia, terrorism, graphic brutality, and deep grief.

Content Warnings

mxmorganic's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional sad tense fast-paced

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

5.0

I was rereading Sophocles’ Antigone a few weeks ago, as the start of a larger “revisiting Antigone” project, in which I was also reading post-Sophocles adaptations and re-imaginings of the story. That’s how I came to Home Fire.

The novel follows more or less the same story as Antigone, but framed around a British family of Palestinian ancestry. The brother of the family, Parvaiz (filling the role of Polynices in the original play) leaves home to join ISIS. It’s hard to say much more than that without giving away a lot of the novel’s best moments, but the upshot is that in retelling Antigone, Shamsie ends up also telling a story about the unexpected ways terrorism can rip families apart, and the ways that efforts to combat terrorism have often done little more than exacerbate existing anti-Muslim racism.

Shamsie’s adaptation of Sophocles for her novel is stunning. She opens the novel by greatly expanding upon Sophocles’ Ismene through how she writes Isma (the novel’s equivalent), giving a proper voice and a tragic story to a character who has very little to do in the original play. Similarly, through her character Eamonn, who fills the role of Sophocles’ Haemon, Shamsie believably imagines why and how Haemon and Antigone might have fallen in love, where Sophocles simply says “Haemon is Antigone’s fiancé” and leaves it to the audience to fill in that gap. Parvaiz is a very interesting take on Polynices, keeping Polynices’ belief that he’s acting justly and for the greater good while adding a key difference in that Parvaiz comes to regret what he’s done. Aneeka, Shamsie’s take on Antigone, embodies the headstrong insistence of Sophocles’ character to an even greater degree. It’s a hard task to write a character who would believably go to the extreme lengths Antigone does for her brother Polynices, but Shamsie succeeds: Aneeka is exactly the sort of person who would do what she does for Parvaiz. Finally, Shamsie’s take on Creon, Karamet, feels exactly right as a modern version of Sophocles’ character, a man whose insistence on law and political power cost him everything. He also reminds me a good deal of the Creon in Jean Anouilh’s Antigone (a play I also recommend), adding another fascinating angle to an already rich character – indeed, one of several such characters in an incredibly rich novel.

To demonstrate how this all works, I include here two quotes that I think beautifully encapsulate both what Shamsie is doing with Sophocles, and what she’s doing with the modern world:

“[Parvaiz] didn’t know how to break out of these currents of history, how to shake free of the demons he had attached to his own heels.” (pg. 175)

“‘[Aneeka] has been abused for the crime of daring to love while covering her head, vilified for believing that she had the right to want a life with someone whose history is at odds with hers, denounced for wanting to bury her brother beside her mother…’” (pg. 258)

Anyway, Home Fire’s a brilliant novel for how it retells Antigone, and an incredibly rewarding read besides, but as the premise would suggest, it’s not for the faint of heart. If you’re up for a read that’s quite tough emotionally, I recommend it very, very highly.

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solypoly's review

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emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced

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

5.0

Content Warnings

gabbygarcia's review

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dark emotional sad tense fast-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

3.75

Content Warnings

justagirlwithbooks's review

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3.75

"Grief manifested itself in ways that felt like anything but grief; grief obliterated all feelings but grief; grief made a twin wear the same shirt for days on end to preserve the morning on which the dead were still living; grief made a twin peel stars off the ceiling and lie in bed with glowing points adhered to fingertips; grief was bad-tempered, grief was kind; grief saw nothing but itself, grief saw every speck of pain in the world; grief spread its wings large like an eagle, grief huddled small like a porcupine; grief needed company, grief craved solitude; grief wanted to remember, wanted to forget; grief raged, grief whimpered; grief made time compress and contract; grief tasted like hunger, felt like numbness, sounded like silence; grief tasted like bile, felt like blades, sounded like all the noise of the world. Grief was a shape-shifter, and invisible too; grief could be captured as reflection in a twin’s eye. Grief heard its death sentence the morning you both woke up and one was singing and the other caught the song."

I... really don't know how to feel about this book. On one hand, the writing is absolutely gorgeous and every character is layered with complexities. On the other hand, this book was trying to explore what the British-Pakistani Muslim experience was, which I don't think it did very accurately:

I can see why the author did what she did, but I don't like the way that Muslims were portrayed in this book. This book started out with a good example of what being a Muslim is like, but then it evolved into something else entirely. An example of this can be how Aneeka, despite being a hijabi, engages in an affair with Eomann. You might ask: what's wrong with that? Other than the fact that it is forbidden to have romantic relationships with the opposite sex before marriage, let alone sex, it also allows for what hijab means to be misconstrued. Hijab is modesty, including how you carry yourself. I knew that I would be reading a love story, I just thought that the love story would be different. I can see what Kamila Shamsie was trying to achieve, and I like the main messaging of this story, but at the same time, I wish that she did things differently.

This was one of my 5 star predictions, and a few changes could have made this book absolutely phenomenal for me. But alas, here we are.

Content Warnings

pranjuli's review against another edition

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emotional reflective sad fast-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

5.0

Content Warnings

misskimmers's review against another edition

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challenging emotional sad tense medium-paced

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

4.5

A devastating examination on the intersection of racism, politics, religion, family and love told compassionately across multiple viewpoints. This novel is an absolute must-read.

Content Warnings

jeyjeyyy's review

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challenging dark emotional inspiring reflective sad tense medium-paced

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

4.25

A beautiful, moving, thought provoking novel. This is a story everyone should read.

Content Warnings

eve_kadou's review against another edition

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challenging emotional informative inspiring sad tense medium-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? It's complicated

4.0

Content Warnings

readwithev's review against another edition

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emotional reflective sad fast-paced

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

5.0

I love this book more than I initially thought! At first I was hesitant because Isma’s perspective starts the story. I didn’t feel like I understood her. However, each section of the book is from another character’s perspective (written in 3rd person). As more information is revealed by each character, I learned to empathize with Isma more. Home Fire asks powerful questions of us as readers and from the characters: how to endure racism as an immigrant, what does it mean to be a citizen, how do we endure grief, and what we are willing to do for our family? There were two unexpected twists that chewed my heart up and spit it back out 😭💔
I learned to see Eamonn as a man trying to escape his father’s shadow, coming to terms with his father’s selfishness and political motives, and learning to speak his mind.
All these characters have flaws that make them painfully human and relatable, but they also have redeemable qualities. They love their families, they feel lonely and inadequate sometimes, but they’re also seeking/working towards a life purpose. Even Karamat who is motivated by potential political gains, but loves his wife and is afraid of losing the power he has worked hard for. He’s also caught between his life as a political figure and his identity as a Pakistani immigrant.
Highly recommend!

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