I enjoy this author most of the time (other than the ghost story last year, which was 100% not my cup of tea) so I made sure to put myself on the hold list for this book early on. It's basically historical fiction, although one of the narrators is in present day and is a descendant of the characters during the historical time period portions. It wound up being more timely than he even intended, since Aleppo and Syria are in the news this weekend. The historical part of the novel is set in 1915. A just out of college young woman volunteers to go with her father on an aid mission to Syria. I feel bad for not knowing this piece of history already, but there was a terrible genocide happening at the time that the characters witness first hand. Elizabeth meets and falls for a Armenian (it isn't quite as sappy as it sounds) widower. Armen (Yes, he's Armen the Armenian) has to leave Aleppo and so some of the chapters follow him on his journey. Others follow Elizabeth during her time in Aleppo and the women she meets and tries to save. The current day part of the story is Elizabeth's granddaughter trying to figure out and fit together that time in her family's history.
I honestly had a hard time getting through it. A lot of the time it felt like I was reading a book for English class. But when it was over, I could appreciate it as a whole. I don't know why it happened that way, but it did. I had a really hard time with the names because they are all pretty similar, and I had zero working knowledge of that part of the world going in. That's just my own lack of knowledge though.
No comments:
Post a Comment