snoakes7001's review against another edition
5.0
I absolutely loved this. It's a beautiful story of love, loss and the aftermath of war. The different strands span thirty years, and slowly they intertwine and come together. Highly recommended.
wildc's review against another edition
4.0
In ‘Beautiful World, Where Are You’ by Sally Rooney, one of the protagonists, Alice - a novelist - says,
“The problem with the contemporary Euro-American novel is that it relies for its structural integrity on suppressing the lived realities of most human beings on earth. To confront the poverty and misery in which millions of people are forced to live, to put the fact of that poverty, that misery, side by side with the lives of the ‘main characters’ of a novel, would be deemed either tasteless or simply artistically unsuccessful. Who can care, in short, what happens to the novel’s protagonists, when it’s happening in the context of the increasingly fast, increasingly brutal exploitation of a majority of the human “species?”
In this book Aminatta Forna manages precisely such a juxtaposition: She tells the love stories of interesting but never easy protagonists whilst never shying away from the realities of the civil war that casts a shadow over them.
Unlike, her later novel, ‘Happiness’, this book and its characters didn’t grab me immediately and it was only the fact that I’d enjoyed the other book so much, that kept me going through the first few chapters. But this book is a slow burn in which the characters and the background of the civil war in Sierra Leone gradually assume greater and greater depth.
I was listening to the book on audio and there were definitely times when the descriptions of the brutality inflicted on civilians was hard to listen to. But the violence depicted is never gratuitous. In fact, the author is as sparing as she can be with this whilst still vividly getting the point across.
To manage to end this book on a note of hope shows the consummate skill that makes Aminatta Forna one of this century’s most admirable novelists.
“The problem with the contemporary Euro-American novel is that it relies for its structural integrity on suppressing the lived realities of most human beings on earth. To confront the poverty and misery in which millions of people are forced to live, to put the fact of that poverty, that misery, side by side with the lives of the ‘main characters’ of a novel, would be deemed either tasteless or simply artistically unsuccessful. Who can care, in short, what happens to the novel’s protagonists, when it’s happening in the context of the increasingly fast, increasingly brutal exploitation of a majority of the human “species?”
In this book Aminatta Forna manages precisely such a juxtaposition: She tells the love stories of interesting but never easy protagonists whilst never shying away from the realities of the civil war that casts a shadow over them.
Unlike, her later novel, ‘Happiness’, this book and its characters didn’t grab me immediately and it was only the fact that I’d enjoyed the other book so much, that kept me going through the first few chapters. But this book is a slow burn in which the characters and the background of the civil war in Sierra Leone gradually assume greater and greater depth.
I was listening to the book on audio and there were definitely times when the descriptions of the brutality inflicted on civilians was hard to listen to. But the violence depicted is never gratuitous. In fact, the author is as sparing as she can be with this whilst still vividly getting the point across.
To manage to end this book on a note of hope shows the consummate skill that makes Aminatta Forna one of this century’s most admirable novelists.
saeruh's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
2.0
Whew boy I am finally done with this book. The writing style is so odd and the pacing is so slow that this took me several weeks to read because I could only read about 30-40 pages a day before getting hopelessly bored. I considered dnfing but I had actually paid for the kindle version because the premise sounded so interesting. The way I would possibly recommend this book to others is if you’re super into English literature because there is some quite beautiful bits of writing, it’s just the overall prose completely bogs down everything. For being a book that takes place in a specific place in a specific period of time, I found that it was quite difficult to tell that the setting was actually Sierra Leone without the book description telling me so.
leonardjacobs's review against another edition
Compelling beginning, but this is one of the few books I've started in the past number of years that I couldn't finish. Just didn't get my interest.
qqjj's review
challenging
dark
mysterious
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Rape, Genocide, Murder, Death, Medical trauma, Forced institutionalization, Terminal illness, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Medical content, Grief, Colonisation, Police brutality, Mental illness, Death of parent, Violence, Sexual violence, War, and Pregnancy
dana_in_denver's review against another edition
3.0
This book is hard to rate with the star system. It unfolds slowly and it is so dark it is hard to find "entertaining." However, it is a book I am glad that I read in that I learned a lot about the civil war in Sierra Leone and about PTSD. 99% of the population of Sierra Leone was considered to have PTSD after the war.
krissy1's review
2.5
‘’𝙲𝚘𝚞𝚛𝚊𝚐𝚎 𝚒𝚜 𝚗𝚘𝚝 𝚠𝚑𝚊𝚝 𝚒𝚝 𝚝𝚘𝚘𝚔 𝚝𝚘 𝚜𝚞𝚛𝚟𝚒𝚟𝚎. 𝚀𝚞𝚒𝚝𝚎 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚘𝚙𝚙𝚘𝚜𝚒𝚝𝚎! 𝚈𝚘𝚞 𝚑𝚊𝚍 𝚝𝚘 𝚋𝚎 𝚊 𝚌𝚘𝚠𝚊𝚛𝚍 𝚝𝚘 𝚜𝚞𝚛𝚟𝚒𝚟𝚎."
About the book: 𝙎𝙚𝙩 𝙪𝙥 𝙞𝙣 𝙛𝙧𝙚𝙚𝙩𝙤𝙬𝙣 𝙝𝙤𝙨𝙥𝙞𝙩𝙖𝙡, 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙨𝙩𝙤𝙧𝙮 𝙘𝙚𝙣𝙩𝙚𝙧𝙨 3 𝙈𝙚𝙣, 𝙀𝙡𝙞𝙖𝙨 𝘾𝙤𝙡𝙚, 𝙖𝙣 𝙖𝙘𝙖𝙙𝙚𝙢𝙞𝙘 𝙥𝙧𝙤𝙛𝙚𝙨𝙨𝙤𝙧, 𝘼𝙙𝙧𝙞𝙖𝙣 𝙇𝙤𝙘𝙠𝙝𝙚𝙖𝙧𝙩, 𝙖 𝙥𝙨𝙮𝙘𝙝𝙤𝙩𝙝𝙚𝙧𝙖𝙥𝙞𝙨𝙩 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙆𝙖𝙞 𝙈𝙖𝙣𝙨𝙖𝙧𝙖𝙮 𝙖 𝙨𝙪𝙧𝙜𝙚𝙤𝙣 𝙖𝙨 𝙩𝙝𝙚𝙮 𝙩𝙚𝙡𝙡 𝙩𝙝𝙚𝙞𝙧 𝙨𝙩𝙤𝙧𝙮 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙃𝙤𝙬 𝙩𝙝𝙚𝙮 𝙝𝙖𝙣𝙙𝙡𝙚𝙙 𝙩𝙝𝙚𝙞𝙧 𝙡𝙞𝙫𝙚𝙨 𝙙𝙪𝙧𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙖𝙛𝙩𝙚𝙧 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙘𝙞𝙫𝙞𝙡 𝙬𝙖𝙧 𝙞𝙣 𝙨𝙞𝙚𝙧𝙧𝙖 𝙇𝙚𝙤𝙣.
Thoughts: 𝑻𝒉𝒊𝒔 𝒘𝒂𝒔 𝒒𝒖𝒊𝒕𝒆 𝒂 𝒃𝒖𝒔𝒚 𝒃𝒐𝒐𝒌, 𝒚𝒐𝒖 𝒘𝒊𝒍𝒍 𝒏𝒆𝒆𝒅 𝒕𝒐 𝒉𝒂𝒗𝒆 𝒑𝒂𝒕𝒊𝒆𝒏𝒄𝒆 𝒊𝒏𝒐𝒓𝒅𝒆𝒓 𝒕𝒐 𝒈𝒆𝒕 𝒕𝒉𝒓𝒐𝒖𝒈𝒉 𝒊𝒕.
𝑺𝒐 𝒔𝒍𝒐𝒘 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒘𝒐𝒓𝒅𝒚, 𝒊𝒕 𝒘𝒂𝒔 𝒂𝒄𝒕𝒖𝒂𝒍𝒍𝒚 𝒎𝒊𝒏𝒅 𝒏𝒖𝒎𝒃𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒂𝒕 𝒕𝒊𝒎𝒆𝒔.
𝑾𝒆𝒍𝒍, 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒔𝒕𝒐𝒓𝒚 𝒍𝒊𝒏𝒆 𝒊𝒔 𝒓𝒆𝒂𝒍𝒍𝒚 𝒊𝒏𝒕𝒆𝒓𝒆𝒔𝒕𝒊𝒏𝒈, 𝒊𝒕'𝒔 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒏𝒂𝒓𝒓𝒂𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏 𝒕𝒉𝒂𝒕 𝒘𝒂𝒔 𝒃𝒐𝒓𝒊𝒏𝒈.
𝑷𝑺, 𝑰 𝒋𝒖𝒔𝒕 𝒄𝒐𝒖𝒍𝒅𝒏'𝒕 𝒃𝒓𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒎𝒚𝒔𝒆𝒍𝒇 𝒕𝒐 𝒄𝒂𝒓𝒆 𝒂𝒃𝒐𝒖𝒕 𝑨𝒅𝒓𝒊𝒂𝒏 𝒐𝒓 𝑲𝒂𝒊 𝒂𝒕 𝒂𝒍𝒍, 𝒘𝒊𝒔𝒉𝒆𝒅 𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒓𝒆 𝒘𝒂𝒔 𝒂 𝒇𝒆𝒎𝒂𝒍𝒆 𝑷𝑶𝑽.
denimbaobab's review against another edition
5.0
I stayed up until 2h30 one Monday morning in order to find out how this tale would end. Mamakay, Kai, Agnes, they filled my dreams for days.
sophiewilliams's review against another edition
2.0
This made me really uncomfortable in parts - very graphic, nonromanticised sex scenes make for difficult reading especially when it's asentences dropped in with very little warning.
Found the relationship between Elias and Safia v odd, and quite stalkerish.
Just didn't suit the mood I was in while listening to it and nearly became a dnf
Found the relationship between Elias and Safia v odd, and quite stalkerish.
Just didn't suit the mood I was in while listening to it and nearly became a dnf