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3.83 AVERAGE
3.83 AVERAGE
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
N/A
Diverse cast of characters:
N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus:
N/A
emotional
reflective
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
N/A
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
I feel like I’m meant to rate this much more highly, like I expect to be judged for not thinking it was better, but although it has a unique voice and sad subject matters, it just didn’t deliver fully on what it set up for me. I expected it to go further, deeper. It felt like all setup and like it never really got going. Tragic events are referenced, but the narrator is a remote observer of almost all of them and how she actually feels about them is often completely not mentioned. There is deep loneliness in her throughout, but otherwise very little real connection to the events described, which makes the larger cultural events briefly referenced, although they have major historical significance, feel fairly irrelevant to the story actually being told in the text.
I don’t know if it’s a translation choice or if the lack of clarity was a stylistic choice in the original text as well, but using no names and only the definite article in place of any possessive adjectives can make descriptions hard to follow, and although it lends itself well to her feeling of loneliness and otherness (referenced directly in language, about her being excluded from “you”), it does make an already fairly foggy series of events more so. And the complete lack of any description of the girl’s age or the passage of time makes the timeline of the vignettes very unclear, as it’s obvious that you’re often jumping forwards and backwards in time but by how much and when exactly is completely unknown. How much time does the book span? What age is she at any point in this? What age she is at certain points would hugely recolour the story of those moments and you just can’t know which version of events you’re dealing with.
It made me sad, there’s some really beautiful prose and description, but I can’t say I actually recommend it or rate the whole thing very highly.
I don’t know if it’s a translation choice or if the lack of clarity was a stylistic choice in the original text as well, but using no names and only the definite article in place of any possessive adjectives can make descriptions hard to follow, and although it lends itself well to her feeling of loneliness and otherness (referenced directly in language, about her being excluded from “you”), it does make an already fairly foggy series of events more so. And the complete lack of any description of the girl’s age or the passage of time makes the timeline of the vignettes very unclear, as it’s obvious that you’re often jumping forwards and backwards in time but by how much and when exactly is completely unknown. How much time does the book span? What age is she at any point in this? What age she is at certain points would hugely recolour the story of those moments and you just can’t know which version of events you’re dealing with.
It made me sad, there’s some really beautiful prose and description, but I can’t say I actually recommend it or rate the whole thing very highly.
dark
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
N/A
Diverse cast of characters:
N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
challenging
reflective
medium-paced
dark
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
challenging
reflective
sad
This was a nice surprise. It's less a novella than a collection of poetic vignettes/sketches, seen through the eyes of an unnamed young Palestinian girl. She's a detached observer of the mundane as well as of the grief and loss that her family experiences. She's also hauntingly lonely, unable to really connect with her family—especially her siblings and her mother—and the heaviness of that weighs on every page.
I was fascinated by the structure of this book too. It's broken into parts, each of which seems to cover the same events chronologically but focusing on a different theme (color, silence, movement, language) each time.
I think I'd have to read it again to fully appreciate it (it's a quick 72 pages, so that wouldn't be a burden), but the writing is beautiful. Worth a read if you're comfortable with ambiguity and with a story that takes its time to reveal itself.
I was fascinated by the structure of this book too. It's broken into parts, each of which seems to cover the same events chronologically but focusing on a different theme (color, silence, movement, language) each time.
I think I'd have to read it again to fully appreciate it (it's a quick 72 pages, so that wouldn't be a burden), but the writing is beautiful. Worth a read if you're comfortable with ambiguity and with a story that takes its time to reveal itself.
challenging
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
challenging
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
N/A
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated