Reviews

Rita Khoury is half Irish and half Lebanese, from two large clan north of Boston. Her father is a doctor and his Lebanese family is comfortably upper middle class. They are Maronite Christians who are part of the Eastern Rite Orthodox Catholics. The Irish American branch of her family is Roman Catholic and lower middle class. Rita, always a driven being, goes to Harvard, but instead of medicine, she majors in Middle Eastern Studies. She also builds on her childhood knowledge of Arabic to prepare her for work in the region.

Rita gets a job with a fictional high-powered newspaper, going first to Beirut and later to Baghdad in 2003, at the beginning of the American-led invasion. In Beirut, she has a relationship with a wealthy Palestinian man. In Baghdad, she learns the Iraqi Arabic dialect and jumps into relentless coverage of the war. Rita wasn't always likeable. Her pursuit of her story in the midst of devastation and grief begs the question of whether this kind of journalism is worth it. This novel describes multiple negative aspects of the job. These include : intruding on the grief of victims, collusion with the American propaganda structure by "playing neutral" and hiding important truths, and doing all this at the expense of the local population, particularly by endangering the lives of locals (and their families) who hired to work as translators.

Overall this was a satisfying read. Being a New Englander who lived in Boston for 20 years, I was interested in the setting of the novel. The author, however, changed the names of the towns where the characters lived. The Boston area has a large Armenian population (second after Southern California), but I was not aware of an Arab American community, such as the one described in this novel. Looking for information on this, it appears that the community is diverse in origen and the majority live in Eastern Massachusetts (https://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/aai/pages/7775/attachments/original/1431630672/Massachusetts.pdf?1431630672 ). My conclusion is that the community described in the story is fictional with some grounding in fact.

I listened to the audiobook. While I felt the narration of the parts of the book set in the Middle East and the American Iraqi community was very good, including the use of Arabic, I did not find the Massachusetts-based narration satisfying. One of the narrators horribly mispronounced names of some towns such as Haverhill (pronounced Hay-vril) which was pronounced as Have-her-hill. Though people generally refer to a "Boston accent", the truth is there is tremendous variety in the Eastern Massachusetts accents. These accents are notoriously difficult for non-natives to imitate. The female narrator did an "OK" job but made the mistake of having all characters from working class to upper middle class speak exactly the same. I realize that my critique of the Massachusetts accents are relevant only to listeners who know them. It is likely that the Iraqi Arabic segments could be critiqued by listeners who know that language.

Overall, this is a story of ambition (sometimes blind), and for me, raised questions about the relationship between Americans working in conflict zones, and the local population. It portrays Arab protagonists as fully rounded characters, and at the end I was liked the character of Nabeel more than Robin.

mverdoorn's review against another edition

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5.0

Just so good!!! It is a commitment and spans multiple generations, but it came together in such a powerful story. It did a great job humanizing what happened in Iraq and the lasting effects.