jmmstp's review
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
rachel_mft's review against another edition
5.0
I loved this. Beautiful, haunting, heart-wrenching, life-affirming. It felt a little sentimental to me in places at first, but soon I got caught in the rhythm of the story and the fineness of the writing, and I believed every word. I enjoy novels about Russia, but I knew nothing at all about Chechnya...this was a wonderful introduction.
lilysykes's review
challenging
dark
emotional
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
rlk7m's review against another edition
5.0
Tragically sad and yet full of little moments to make you smile and feel hope, this book was just beautiful. Something that I really appreciated was the way Marra would provide asides about what happened to the characters after the time in the book finished. In a plot filled with so much uncertainty, it was comforting to know there were happy endings.
sarah_dietrich's review against another edition
4.0
Really liked this, but felt that the ending was .
Spoiler
too neatly wrapped upjuliana_aldous's review against another edition
5.0
"There is something miraculous in the way the years wash away your evidence, first you, then your friends and family, then the descendants who remember your face, until you aren’t even a memory, you’re only carbon, no greater than your atoms, and time will divide them as well."
maddieschink's review
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
abrswf's review against another edition
4.0
This book is beautifully and passionately written, and the information about the persecution of Chechnya it provides needs to be a lot more widely known and understood here in the West. It is also loaded with truly mordant and bitter wit and humor. I wish I could give it five stars, as I do recommend it.
But I found it a frustrating and at times unnecessarily dramatic book, too. Surely when the subject is mass persecution, including torture and murder, there isn't a need to add more to keep our interest? (I have the same problem with over the top literary handling of the almost unimaginable genocides of the earlier 20th century.) This book, however, piles on the soap opera, including mysteriously disabled wives, adultery, secret parenthood, sexual slavery, extraordinary artistic endeavors, and more.
I'd add that although almost nothing can be said in defense of the Russian abuse of Chechens, I found the book's portrayal of all rebels as suffering heroes, and all Russians as brutish idiots more than a little cartoonish.
My final criticism of this book is that some of it seems needlessly obscure. I wouldn't complain about this normally but Mara says in an afterward that his story revolves around two stories common to Christianity and Islam. Uh, no. The first, about a father's sacrifice of his son, I.e. Abraham/Isaac, actually is never presented though repeatedly raised in the book. Rather, the ongoing theme is parental neglect of children. I have to say, too, the caring engaged parents/fathers are actually far more prevalent in this book. The second story, which Mara says is about an orphan raised by her family's executioners, is also barely presented in the book except as an epilogue -- and I don't see how the character who does the upbringing shares anything with the destroyer of the child's original family than ethnic identity. Anyway, what is this famous second Bible story? Moses being raised by Pharaoh's daughter? That well known story is very hard to detect in this book.
But I found it a frustrating and at times unnecessarily dramatic book, too. Surely when the subject is mass persecution, including torture and murder, there isn't a need to add more to keep our interest? (I have the same problem with over the top literary handling of the almost unimaginable genocides of the earlier 20th century.) This book, however, piles on the soap opera, including mysteriously disabled wives, adultery, secret parenthood, sexual slavery, extraordinary artistic endeavors, and more.
I'd add that although almost nothing can be said in defense of the Russian abuse of Chechens, I found the book's portrayal of all rebels as suffering heroes, and all Russians as brutish idiots more than a little cartoonish.
My final criticism of this book is that some of it seems needlessly obscure. I wouldn't complain about this normally but Mara says in an afterward that his story revolves around two stories common to Christianity and Islam. Uh, no. The first, about a father's sacrifice of his son, I.e. Abraham/Isaac, actually is never presented though repeatedly raised in the book. Rather, the ongoing theme is parental neglect of children. I have to say, too, the caring engaged parents/fathers are actually far more prevalent in this book. The second story, which Mara says is about an orphan raised by her family's executioners, is also barely presented in the book except as an epilogue -- and I don't see how the character who does the upbringing shares anything with the destroyer of the child's original family than ethnic identity. Anyway, what is this famous second Bible story? Moses being raised by Pharaoh's daughter? That well known story is very hard to detect in this book.