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A review by emp2707
The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree by Shokoofeh Azar
3.0
Extremely poetically written book about one family’s navigation of the time after the Islamic revolution.
What makes it even more gut wrenching is the fact that it is narrated by the ghost of the youngest child, Bahar.
However, this book deals with death as an extension of life, rather than it being an end.
‘We dead are the sorrowful side of life, while the living are the joyful side of death.’
It is true in this book that actually some of the happier moments come following a characters worldly death.
I will say the writing style took a bit for me to get my head around, didn’t realise until reading some of the reviews that it is ‘magical realism’ which I found a bit hard to understand. Definitely feels like the type of book you might get more from in a second read?
What makes it even more gut wrenching is the fact that it is narrated by the ghost of the youngest child, Bahar.
However, this book deals with death as an extension of life, rather than it being an end.
‘We dead are the sorrowful side of life, while the living are the joyful side of death.’
It is true in this book that actually some of the happier moments come following a characters worldly death.
I will say the writing style took a bit for me to get my head around, didn’t realise until reading some of the reviews that it is ‘magical realism’ which I found a bit hard to understand. Definitely feels like the type of book you might get more from in a second read?