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bethamyyy 's review for:
Minor Detail
by Adania Shibli
Short but powerful.
I found out about this book through the news as the Frankfurt book fair cancelled the award ceremony for this author and her book due to the conflict in Israel and Palestine. Given all that is happening to Palestinians it felt important to read this book.
Reading the officer’s chapter was definitely the hardest of the two. What struck me most about his chapter was how emotionless and detached he was. Reading what he did to the girl and let his soldier’s do made me genuinely feel sick. It also stuck out to me how he saw the girl as ‘other’ and would barely acknowledge her as human. When I finished his chapter I was left confused and uncertain what his mindset and motivations were when it came to raping the girl.
Reading the woman’s chapter, although easier than the officer’s, was still very powerful. The first part gives a glimpse for what everyday life is like for Palestinians.
Something I kept noticing in this chapter was a lot of parallels to the officer’s chapter. For example the girl’s dog would always bark when he wasn’t with the girl and of course with the girl’s murder they’d never be reunited. And it was a howling that kept the woman up at night, thinking about the girl. When the woman was looking at the Israeli map then the old Palestinian map, she snapped it shut because of how many Arab villages were gone. This reminds me of the reactions the officer would have when he looked at the infection on his leg, and saw that it had spread and gotten worse. The infection may have been a metaphor for Israeli’s expanding their territory in Palestine. The officer was also very focused with finding spiders in his hut, and the woman often used spider web imagery to describe her feelings.
The ending felt quite unsatisfactory for me. We never find out more about the girl, or the events itself. I wish this book was just a little bit longer and more developed.
The author is very effective with their words. The book is very powerful but not in a way where the author is trying too hard and using big words every other sentence. Their writing was very subtle and effective in helping show the discard for Palestinian life, the history of violence, and the lasting impact it has had.
Edit:
Reading other people’s reviews have pointed a few things out to me. One of them being that the woman’s death was foreshadowed. The officer and soldiers find the Arabs in the clearing by the spring and kill them. The woman arrives at the same spring and shortly after Israeli soldiers shoot her. History repeating itself. The other is that the author describes the officer’s life through minor details such as killing the spiders in his room and cleaning his wound. The author is very talented to be able to write this way and have it be effective rather than annoying and boring. Also the tense quiet that comes over you was not just felt by me. It’s hard to describe just why this book is so powerful and why it sits with you afterwards, which I suppose is in part to the author focusing on the many minor details in this book.
I found out about this book through the news as the Frankfurt book fair cancelled the award ceremony for this author and her book due to the conflict in Israel and Palestine. Given all that is happening to Palestinians it felt important to read this book.
Reading the officer’s chapter was definitely the hardest of the two. What struck me most about his chapter was how emotionless and detached he was. Reading what he did to the girl and let his soldier’s do made me genuinely feel sick. It also stuck out to me how he saw the girl as ‘other’ and would barely acknowledge her as human. When I finished his chapter I was left confused and uncertain what his mindset and motivations were when it came to raping the girl.
Reading the woman’s chapter, although easier than the officer’s, was still very powerful. The first part gives a glimpse for what everyday life is like for Palestinians.
Something I kept noticing in this chapter was a lot of parallels to the officer’s chapter. For example the girl’s dog would always bark when he wasn’t with the girl and of course with the girl’s murder they’d never be reunited. And it was a howling that kept the woman up at night, thinking about the girl. When the woman was looking at the Israeli map then the old Palestinian map, she snapped it shut because of how many Arab villages were gone. This reminds me of the reactions the officer would have when he looked at the infection on his leg, and saw that it had spread and gotten worse. The infection may have been a metaphor for Israeli’s expanding their territory in Palestine. The officer was also very focused with finding spiders in his hut, and the woman often used spider web imagery to describe her feelings.
The ending felt quite unsatisfactory for me. We never find out more about the girl, or the events itself. I wish this book was just a little bit longer and more developed.
The author is very effective with their words. The book is very powerful but not in a way where the author is trying too hard and using big words every other sentence. Their writing was very subtle and effective in helping show the discard for Palestinian life, the history of violence, and the lasting impact it has had.
Edit:
Reading other people’s reviews have pointed a few things out to me. One of them being that the woman’s death was foreshadowed. The officer and soldiers find the Arabs in the clearing by the spring and kill them. The woman arrives at the same spring and shortly after Israeli soldiers shoot her. History repeating itself. The other is that the author describes the officer’s life through minor details such as killing the spiders in his room and cleaning his wound. The author is very talented to be able to write this way and have it be effective rather than annoying and boring. Also the tense quiet that comes over you was not just felt by me. It’s hard to describe just why this book is so powerful and why it sits with you afterwards, which I suppose is in part to the author focusing on the many minor details in this book.