A review by peppergp
Enter Ghost by Isabella Hammad

medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character

3.0

Lots of really great things about this book, although overall it wasn’t my entirely to my taste.  I liked the incorporation of the playscript-style narration to record group conversations and the stage.  Hammad’s translations of the Arabic version of Hamlet are delightful to read and parse through as someone familiar with the original English text.

I think you’ll enjoy this book a lot more if you know Hamlet (and particularly the character of Gertrude) well, but it is not essential to enjoy the story or catch the more obvious parallel meanings. 
Mariam performing the Hecuba soliloquy in front of the soldiers gave me chills, as did Sonia claiming Wael as her son at the checkpoint.


The narration has a distant feel to it, even in emotionally tense moments, and Hammad leaves lots of conversations unspoken throughout the story.  Her style is not really for me, but there were moments that got to me nonetheless.  I enjoyed the subtle questions about motherhood, grief, and the ways that artists (and academics, and politicians, etc.) sometimes extract from suffering that’s proximal to them in ways that aren’t kind, but are human and possibly even necessary.
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