Scan barcode
A review by jadeyz
The Weight of Our Sky by Hanna Alkaf
4.0
This was such a sad book, but definitely worth a read as long as you pay attention to the listed trigger warnings. (Shout out to Hanna Alkaf for putting all those at the beginning of her book, by the way! Very considerate.)
This book covered a period of history that I barely knew about, but the author managed to give enough details for me to understand what was going on without overwhelming the reader with history and facts. It's set in 1969, during the riots in Malaysia when Malays and Chinese were fighting each other.
In the midst of it all is the main character, Melati. This is definitely a character driven book, and we get close to Melati as her every thought and fear is revealed. I thought this was very well done—how her hopes, loyalties, questions, and struggle with OCD were woven together to make a very dimensional character. It was painful to see how her OCD sometimes took over her body and added so much more stress to an already tense time, but she was also so brave.
This also is not a romance, which I am relieved for. The time frame covered in this book is quite short, so a love story in this would have annoyed me and taken attention away from the other important relationships. Sometimes she only met someone for a very short time, but each character had their own story and complexities—they were all human even when the country was trying to divide itself into Malay and Chinese.
To end, two quotes!
“Bloody politicians and their bloody stupid rhetoric, speeches, ideologies. You ever hear anyone say words don’t matter after this, you tell them about this day, when Malay idiots and Chinese idiots decided to kill one another because they believed what the bloody politicians told them.”
“If I’m going to wage battle with demons both on the street and in my own head, I’m going to do it with all of myself, and not weighed down by borrowed clothes and secondhand memories.”
This book covered a period of history that I barely knew about, but the author managed to give enough details for me to understand what was going on without overwhelming the reader with history and facts. It's set in 1969, during the riots in Malaysia when Malays and Chinese were fighting each other.
In the midst of it all is the main character, Melati. This is definitely a character driven book, and we get close to Melati as her every thought and fear is revealed. I thought this was very well done—how her hopes, loyalties, questions, and struggle with OCD were woven together to make a very dimensional character. It was painful to see how her OCD sometimes took over her body and added so much more stress to an already tense time, but she was also so brave.
This also is not a romance, which I am relieved for. The time frame covered in this book is quite short, so a love story in this would have annoyed me and taken attention away from the other important relationships. Sometimes she only met someone for a very short time, but each character had their own story and complexities—they were all human even when the country was trying to divide itself into Malay and Chinese.
To end, two quotes!
“Bloody politicians and their bloody stupid rhetoric, speeches, ideologies. You ever hear anyone say words don’t matter after this, you tell them about this day, when Malay idiots and Chinese idiots decided to kill one another because they believed what the bloody politicians told them.”
“If I’m going to wage battle with demons both on the street and in my own head, I’m going to do it with all of myself, and not weighed down by borrowed clothes and secondhand memories.”