A review by justagirlwithbooks
Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie

3.75

"Grief manifested itself in ways that felt like anything but grief; grief obliterated all feelings but grief; grief made a twin wear the same shirt for days on end to preserve the morning on which the dead were still living; grief made a twin peel stars off the ceiling and lie in bed with glowing points adhered to fingertips; grief was bad-tempered, grief was kind; grief saw nothing but itself, grief saw every speck of pain in the world; grief spread its wings large like an eagle, grief huddled small like a porcupine; grief needed company, grief craved solitude; grief wanted to remember, wanted to forget; grief raged, grief whimpered; grief made time compress and contract; grief tasted like hunger, felt like numbness, sounded like silence; grief tasted like bile, felt like blades, sounded like all the noise of the world. Grief was a shape-shifter, and invisible too; grief could be captured as reflection in a twin’s eye. Grief heard its death sentence the morning you both woke up and one was singing and the other caught the song."

I... really don't know how to feel about this book. On one hand, the writing is absolutely gorgeous and every character is layered with complexities. On the other hand, this book was trying to explore what the British-Pakistani Muslim experience was, which I don't think it did very accurately:

I can see why the author did what she did, but I don't like the way that Muslims were portrayed in this book.  This book started out with a good example of what being a Muslim is like, but then it evolved into something else entirely. An example of this can be how Aneeka, despite being a hijabi, engages in an affair with Eomann. You might ask: what's wrong with that? Other than the fact that it is forbidden to have romantic relationships with the opposite sex before marriage, let alone sex, it also allows for what hijab means to be misconstrued. Hijab is modesty, including how you carry yourself. I knew that I would be reading a love story, I just thought that the love story would be different. I can see what Kamila Shamsie was trying to achieve, and I like the main messaging of this story, but at the same time, I wish that she did things differently.


This was one of my 5 star predictions, and a few changes could have made this book absolutely phenomenal for me. But alas, here we are. 
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