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caitlinblewden 's review for:
A Good Country
by Laleh Khadivi
Wow - I finally finished it! I'm usually a fast reader but for some reason, this book took me so long to read and I actually had to force myself to pick it up. It was for school English so I knew I had to plough through, but it was not an enjoyable ride!
I wish I could give it more stars because there were many pressing and important messages and issues in it, and some people will probably love it. I felt angered and shocked at the horrific racism and treatment characters received, and the book has many important themes in it, but I feel like there was a definite lack of impact and power in it.
I felt very sad for the protagonist at times, but I found the writing style weird and hard to connect to, as I felt like the characters lacked depth and a sense of reality. It took ages to get to the crux of it, and even then it felt very rushed towards the end.
Also, there are no quotation marks which I found really irritating, and again, it led to a lack of characterisation. The excessive and constant presence of drugs, alcohol and sex was also quite jarring and it got very tedious to read about for 250 pages.
**SPOILERS***
The first 4/5 of the novel was slow and small changes developed, and then suddenly everything changed so quickly. It felt quite unrealistic and sudden, and I did not find the motivation/reasoning behind Rez joining ISIS very believable at all? It seemed to come out of the blue, he was opposed to Islam one second and the next he was on a plane to Syria? I found it a bit odd.
I wish I could give it more stars because there were many pressing and important messages and issues in it, and some people will probably love it. I felt angered and shocked at the horrific racism and treatment characters received, and the book has many important themes in it, but I feel like there was a definite lack of impact and power in it.
I felt very sad for the protagonist at times, but I found the writing style weird and hard to connect to, as I felt like the characters lacked depth and a sense of reality. It took ages to get to the crux of it, and even then it felt very rushed towards the end.
Also, there are no quotation marks which I found really irritating, and again, it led to a lack of characterisation. The excessive and constant presence of drugs, alcohol and sex was also quite jarring and it got very tedious to read about for 250 pages.
**SPOILERS***
The first 4/5 of the novel was slow and small changes developed, and then suddenly everything changed so quickly. It felt quite unrealistic and sudden, and I did not find the motivation/reasoning behind Rez joining ISIS very believable at all? It seemed to come out of the blue, he was opposed to Islam one second and the next he was on a plane to Syria? I found it a bit odd.