2025 & 2026 Reading Challenge discussion

This thread is to discuss There Are Rivers in the Sky by Elif Shafak.

Pages: 464 pages

Length: 1 month (October)

Participants: Valerie, Lorraine, Beth

Everyone reads at their own pace during a Buddy Read. Because participants can be at different parts of the book at different times, it is extremely important to mark spoilers so that the book is not ruined for someone who is not as far along as others!!!

Mark spoilers by placing {spoiler} before the text and {/spoiler} after the text but use the < and > instead of the { and }.

Here are some questions to help get the conversation started! Feel free to look up discussion questions specific to this book or come up with your own. Just make sure any questions that contain spoilers are under spoiler tags.
Discussion questions are not required but may be a fun way to talk about the book and get to know each other!

Prior to starting:
What prompted you to join this buddy read?
Have you read this author before? What do you think of their other books?

Mid-read:
What character or ideas do you relate to the most and why?
Do you have any favorite quotes or scenes?

After reading:
What was enjoyable or not-so-enjoyable about this book?
Did this book change your perception about anything, either within the book (character development) or in real life?

Not sure I’ll have time, but I’d like to join this buddy read so much! It’s been on my tbr for quite a while, and the title is so poetic. I’m going to at least follow your discussion here 🙂

I would like to join this Buddy Read. I read “The Island of Missing Trees” to fulfill a prompt in the Treasure Island Challenge, and enjoyed it very much. It would be fun to further explore the writing of Elif Shafak. Thanks!

Blākie

Both of you are very welcome to join us. I also really enjoyed The Island of Missing Trees so hoping this one is as good.

Let me start by saying that I was happy to begin October with this book, especially after what was probably my worst reading month in years. I don’t know if I’m in what’s called a reading slump, but September was definitely not great — I only read six books (a very small number for me), and only a few earned four stars.

When I started There Are Rivers in the Sky, (view spoiler)[ I was worried it might end up being another three-star read. But as I kept going, I found myself increasingly drawn into the story and genuinely interested in what was happening to the characters. The novel touches on several moments in history, which added real depth to the narrative.

Arthur is such a loving man — I couldn’t help but hope for the best for him. Zaleekhah, on the other hand, was harder to like at first, but she eventually pulls herself together and becomes a woman truly worth respecting.

This author really knows how to tell a story, and I’ll definitely be following her future work. Finally, I have to say that I’m now seriously considering visiting the British Museum in London and the Louvre in Paris to see the artifacts mentioned in the book! (hide spoiler)]

I started this yesterday. Will comment when I’ve read a bit more but seems promising so far.

Part 1. Enjoying this so far, happy to immerse myself in each of the storylines to see where they will lead and how they are interconnected.

Parts 2 and 3. I’m definitely being swept along by these watery tales - she certainly knows how to captivate her readers. The links between the three (or four if you include the Assyrian king) are starting to reveal themselves. Apart from the skilful storytelling, the content and context for the stories is really interesting- I knew a little about both the Assyrians and the Yazidis but it is fascinating to learn more. On the subject of buried rivers, in one of the towns I used to work in, Rochdale UK, they had terrible floods in the town centre and decided to uncover and release the river that had been culverted by the Victorians. Interestingly, here in the Yucatán peninsula all of our rivers are underground!

Finished. I started the last two parts with a deep sense of foreboding, as I had a general idea of where it was going. It was a really tough read. Such a level of cruelty and inhumanity is beyond my comprehension. The ending itself drew the three story threads together very cleverly.
This was a very rich and complex novel, beautifully written and a skilful blend of fact and fiction. It’s certainly a book that lingers in the mind after you reach the end.

This has been moved to the November folder

Hold came through on the audiobook, yay! So I will start this by the weekend. I'm very much looking forward to it.

I am about halfway through, and I am LOVING this book! I love the interweaving of all the characters' stories, and I'm so invested in Arthur I can hardly stand it. I want to skep all the chapters that aren't about him, but I feel like I'll miss a lot of the story if I do that.

(view spoiler)[Oh, I'm just at the point where Arthur visits his mom in the asylum. How incredibly sad. And an interesting contrast as I just finished reading The Mad Wife, set in the 1950s. (hide spoiler)]

Finished. I completely agree with your comments, Valerie! This is a lovely, entertaining, educational, challenging, difficult read, and well worth the time to really savor the beautiful writing and carefully woven plotlines. How they all came together at the end was so so satisfying.

And I also agree with you, Lorraine... I will definitely read more from this author!

Beth wrote: "Finished. I completely agree with your comments, Valerie! This is a lovely, entertaining, educational, challenging, difficult read, and well worth the time to really savor the beautiful writing and..."

Hi Beth, if you haven’t read The Island of Missing Trees then I really recommend it. Even better than this one!

Thank you, Valerie! This is now on my TBR!