Reviews

Planet of Clay by Samar Yazbek

Only show reviews with written explanations

kenjanae_s's review against another edition

dark reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.25

I liked the style of the story but at times the language was confusing and I didn’t know what the main character was talking about.

adam613's review against another edition

Go to review page

4.0

"Don't think that what you are reading is a novel. What I'm writing is the truth, and I am doing it to try and understand what happened."

Rima is a young girl from Damascus who sees life in colours and sings the Qu'ran. She listens more than she speaks and she is restrained from running as she seeks to make sense of the unimaginable horrors around her during the ongoing Syrian Civil War. In Planet of Clay, Samar Yazbek writes an uncanny exploration of acute conditions for the developing mind and spirit of Rima.

"Things don't exist before you feel them."

The book opens with the longest chapter and a sign of things to come as Rima and her mother are passing through checkpoints on their way to visit a friend. With surreal and poetic writing that engages with tension hanging from every paragraph, Rima's story is not unlike many other children's experiences in these horrific settings. Rima shows a strength that is hopeful or delusional, I am not sure. As the story continues, we can see her hope begin to fray at the edges of her sanity as she descends into further desperation for her survival surrounded by loss and destruction.

"I would like not to forget these moments I am writing down, because I can't draw them and they will be lost in my mind, just as I have lost many details from my old life."

I am still at a loss for words at the force and vulnerability of this book. From Rima's introspections on the colour of the purple sky, the eyes of others and the meanings of circles in stories, Planet Clay is a beyond powerful piece of translated literature from from a child's perspective in a part of the world we don't often read about. Full of incantations and imagination, Samar Yazbek has written about a world that melds the magical with the tragic to create a truly harrowing and emotional tale that hits the heart in all the human places.

"It would be beautiful if every death had its own colour. Death is a hat that makes colours invisible."

drlark's review against another edition

Go to review page

emotional reflective sad

3.25

A difficult read, both for the subject matter and the narrative style. Planet of Clay follows Rima, a young woman living in Damascus with her mother and brother as the civil war is breaking out in the 2010s. Rima doesn't see the world the way her family or community does. As she says, her brain is in her feet, and she's compelled to walk and to see the world in circular stories. She chooses not to speak but sings the Qur'an and teaches children how to do art. As the war intensifies and tragedies mount, the gradually unspooling story Rima tells gives the reader a lovely, poetic point of view from which to see all the ugliness. The incongruity between how she sees the world and how the rest of the world treats her is heartbreaking. Glad I read it; glad it's over.

_el__'s review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous challenging inspiring tense medium-paced

2.0

momwrex's review against another edition

Go to review page

5.0

Upsetting, dark, visceral, original. Written from the perspective of a young woman who longs for freedom, while living with many restrictions that are physical, cultural, societal, metaphorical....

abbie_'s review against another edition

Go to review page

dark emotional sad slow-paced

3.5

This was book number 6 for my #WomenInTranslation month reads, and it started out incredibly strong but unfortunately lost some steam around the last third. I struggled to finish it and I’m not sure exactly what happened there, which makes me think it could have just been my mood and I wasn’t concentrating properly. Because genuinely the first half was great!

Translated from the Arabic by Leri Price, Planet of Clay is told from the perspective of Rima, a young Syrian girl who cannot stop walking, so she’s constantly either tied to her mother or restrained elsewhere. She doesn’t talk much, except for being able to recite the Qur’an, but she has a rich inner life filled with drawings & stories. Her world is shattered one day when soldiers open fire on the bus she’s on, killing her mother. She spends the rest of the book being shunted from safe place to safe place (some less safe than others), put into the care of various people who don’t really understand her.

I’ve read quite a few books set during wars told through the eyes of a child and they never get less harrowing. Rima’s innocence, her adoration of The Little Prince, her rambling, lighthearted tangents, all put the tragedy of the Syrian civil war into even sharper relief. She doesn’t understand everything happening around her, her childish narration of bombings, death, violence are extremely unsettling. Her observations and tales are constantly shooting off into various tangents, she promises us (we’re addressed directly) she’ll return to a certain story later but never does. At risk of sounding like I’m back in GCSE English, the confusion of Rima’s narrative reflects the chaos and tumult of a country in the midst of a civil war.

Maybe one day I’ll reread this and see if the story really does stumble in the last part, or if it was my issue! One I’d recommend if you have an interest in wartime fiction and child narrators!

Content Warnings