Play Book Tag discussion

There Are Rivers in the Sky by Elif Shafak
4 stars

This is going to be a difficult review to write. Because while I loved parts of this book, other parts were frustrating. And it is largely my own fault.

Let me start by saying that I wish the author's note at the end were at the beginning. The author talks about the real life people and events this books is based on, and wish I would have had that color at the beginning. If I would have known about the real life George Smith who Arthur was based on, I think I would have done some Wikipedia reading and just had a better base understanding for my read.

But alas, I did not.

I also wish I would have paused early on and Googled a bit more about Nineveh to have a better sense of the geography and history. In general, in hindsight, my overall mantra is that I wish I would have done some little 10 minute Google research bouts at various points throughout the book.

But alas, I did not.

Now that I have that behind me, I did enjoy the book! I was full on invested in King Arthur of the Sewers and Slums as he navigated poverty in London in the 1840s, worked tirelessly, and applied his genius to pull himself onto the spotlight for Nineveh history. The Assyria wing of the British Museum also plays a role, and it was fun to think back (with the aide of pictures) to my visit not long ago when I posed with the lamassu from Nineveh and wandered the halls with artifacts covered in cuneiform.

I was less enamored with the other two storylines -- Narin, a Yazidi girl in Iraq in 2014 and Zaleekhah, a hydrologist in 2018.

At least for Narin, my issue with her storyline was (again) largely due to my own ignorance. I am not well versed on ISIS activities in the Middle East or I would have realized much earlier that her story would likely tie in to the Yazidi genocide. Even without knowing where it was going, her story was extremely impactful and literally had me in tears. And, the author certainly succeeded in raising my awareness.

I am not sure what the point of Zaleekhah's story was. Sure, she was a hydrologist and our other two characters' lives were lived along the Thames and Tigris rivers, but I thought it was a loose connection at best. At the end it did tie into both Arthur and Narin's stories, but at that point it felt too late and I was left with this feeling that maybe I missed something?

Overall, a beautiful, heartbreaking, and wonderful book that I failed to fully enjoy solely due to my own ignorance.

Which feels unfair to the author, but here we are.

I finished the book myself last week, and I feel even less generous than you with how I feel about it. My issues are not with the actual plot, I rather liked the British Museum story arc, but with the way Shafak writes - she is rather rudimentary and manipulative in presentation, relying too much of cheap emotional tricks that used to work so well in Dickensian tearjerkers, but feel awkward and transparent to my modern sensibilities. Or maybe it's just me feeling cynical about a writer using the tragedy of a persecuted people and turning into a sort of soap opera with cardboard characters. Obviously, the author cares deeply about her chosen themes, but I feel she gets too whimsical in style and too sketchy in characterization and plot.
I liked The Forty Rules of Love a little better than this one.

I admit that I am not a very critical reader when it comes to writing techniques. I am 100% a vibes reader!

I did feel like the Narin storyline was crafted solely to shed light on the Yazidi, and in that respect was certainly not a deep dive into the atrocities of 2014 and following.

However, if the author's goal was to simply raise awareness that the Yazidi and their persecution even exist (something I am ashamed to say was not in my lexicon prior to reading this book), then she succeeded with me.

I'll have to check out The Forty Rules of Love. The only other book I have read by Shafak is The Island of Missing Trees, which I liked better than this book as well.

I'd agree that Zaleekah's story was the weakest part of the book. Her dysphoria frustrated me, especially as the characters in the other story lines were actively dealing with more serious issues. She didn't finally come into focus for me until her confrontation with her uncle.