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A review by felishacb
Salt Houses by Hala Alyan
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
informative
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.0
Intergenerational stories that move through time featuring vignettes from different characters across three generations.
You see the pain and never-ending grief of displacement through the lives of this Palestinian family and their descendants, spread across the world from Paris to Boston to Lebanon to Jordan. But rarely home. Their refugee status is a shadow throughout, understood differently by each generation as time passes, but it never overpowers the dignity of their very human existence, their sometimes flawed choices and everyday tensions.
I was engaged throughout the story, but I have to admit the emotional revelations in the last chapters of the book stabbed at my heart. This book will stick with me.
Quotes:
She misses Mustafa. Like a city after a tsunami, the earth is altered without him. Wrecked.
**
'Motherhood doesn't suit me,' she once confessed to Budur, drunk. 'I don't have the stomach for not knowing what's next.'
**
"'Punch me,' he wants to yell at Mustafa. 'Tell me to fuck off. Hit me in the face. Pick up that goddamn suitcase. Walk down the driveway.
I would have followed you.
I would have followed you.
Take me with you. You can save yourself. We can both live.'"
You see the pain and never-ending grief of displacement through the lives of this Palestinian family and their descendants, spread across the world from Paris to Boston to Lebanon to Jordan. But rarely home. Their refugee status is a shadow throughout, understood differently by each generation as time passes, but it never overpowers the dignity of their very human existence, their sometimes flawed choices and everyday tensions.
I was engaged throughout the story, but I have to admit the emotional revelations in the last chapters of the book stabbed at my heart. This book will stick with me.
She misses Mustafa. Like a city after a tsunami, the earth is altered without him. Wrecked.
**
'Motherhood doesn't suit me,' she once confessed to Budur, drunk. 'I don't have the stomach for not knowing what's next.'
**
"'Punch me,' he wants to yell at Mustafa. 'Tell me to fuck off. Hit me in the face. Pick up that goddamn suitcase. Walk down the driveway.
I would have followed you.
I would have followed you.
Take me with you. You can save yourself. We can both live.'"
Content Warnings
Graphic: Grief and War
Moderate: Torture, Murder, Pregnancy, Islamophobia, and Death