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A review by dobbsthedog
The Clothesline Swing by Danny Ramadan
5.0
Oh my god, this book utterly destroyed me. But the writing was so damn beautiful, I couldn’t really care.
The story is about a couple, who are Syrian refugees, and they’ve now been living in Canada for forty years, and one of them is dying. Each night he asks his partner to tell him a story, which he does. It’s a take on 1001 Nights, but instead of Scheherazade telling a story each night to keep herself alive, our Hakawati is telling stories to keep his partner alive one more night.
It is so sad, but the writing is so beautiful, which actually makes it even more sad. If I hadn’t somewhat hardened my heart while reading, I likely would have just cried through the entire book.
Through the storytelling we get to learn more about these men’s lives, mostly prior to coming to Canada; their childhoods in Syria, some glimpses of their time spent in Beirut, and more.
What I found really interesting thought the book is that our narrator and his partner don’t have names. The narrator is often referred to as Hakawati, which means storyteller in Arabic. And the narrator never calls his partner by name, it’s usually ‘my love’ or something similar.
Throughout the book and the stories, death is almost always there, waiting, as a third character that is regularly interacted with. I think that really added to the feeling of urgency of the book, that the partner really is close to the end.
This book is absolutely remarkable as a debut novel. It just absolutely blew me away, and I’m honestly feeling a bit bereft, now that I’ve read all of Danny Ramadan’s books. Even though The Clothesline Swing was emotionally exhausting to read, I would reread it in a heartbeat.
The story is about a couple, who are Syrian refugees, and they’ve now been living in Canada for forty years, and one of them is dying. Each night he asks his partner to tell him a story, which he does. It’s a take on 1001 Nights, but instead of Scheherazade telling a story each night to keep herself alive, our Hakawati is telling stories to keep his partner alive one more night.
It is so sad, but the writing is so beautiful, which actually makes it even more sad. If I hadn’t somewhat hardened my heart while reading, I likely would have just cried through the entire book.
Through the storytelling we get to learn more about these men’s lives, mostly prior to coming to Canada; their childhoods in Syria, some glimpses of their time spent in Beirut, and more.
What I found really interesting thought the book is that our narrator and his partner don’t have names. The narrator is often referred to as Hakawati, which means storyteller in Arabic. And the narrator never calls his partner by name, it’s usually ‘my love’ or something similar.
Throughout the book and the stories, death is almost always there, waiting, as a third character that is regularly interacted with. I think that really added to the feeling of urgency of the book, that the partner really is close to the end.
This book is absolutely remarkable as a debut novel. It just absolutely blew me away, and I’m honestly feeling a bit bereft, now that I’ve read all of Danny Ramadan’s books. Even though The Clothesline Swing was emotionally exhausting to read, I would reread it in a heartbeat.