Vance Miguel Johnson’s Reviews > A History of the Big House: A Novel > Status Update

Okay… Charif has added in a whore-complex character without a confirmed name. Better yet, one of the characters presented as the most trustworthy source is being misogynistic in description. And then the thoughts that Charif writes for Farid are adjacent to rape culture… Majdalani has been a let down.

I definitely did not predict that book’s final chapter would focus on the financial follies of Farid… it’s somewhat interesting.

I think it’s pretty disappointing that this great escape feels so boring… maybe it wouldn’t, if I felt like the narrator wasn’t so bad at filtering through important details from the unnecessary

Wow, the last five pages had a lot of interesting bits. 1) Djemal Pasha’s failed pre-WWI attempt to win over French political support to get himself into a high office within the Ottoman Empire, being unsatisfied with his Syrian Viceroyship. 2) The acknowledgment of American evangelical missionaries in Lebanon even after WWI had officially begun.

The WWI Turkish government, Ottoman Empire, and France era is one of the most fascinating times to me, and Charif has somehow managed to lose my attention entirely… this is a shlog right now :/