A review by cody_crumley
Evil Eye by Etaf Rum

challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

“Who cares what the world sees if you can’t even stand to look at yourself?”

This might be one of the hardest reviews I have had to write for a bookclub book in a while. This book hit me emotionally in a place that I have not visited since my father died. 

The way that Etaf Rum’s writing handles the descriptions of mental health and associated themes like micro and macro aggressions that the main character Yara has thrown at her. The way the author describes intergenerational family trauma. A lot of books that try to focus on mental health themes like they miss the finer details or only graze the surface. The fact that Rum is able to paint in the grey area with such delicate touches, like being able to show Yara’s mother as both a terrible victim of mental/physical abuse from her husband but also a perpetrator of mental abuse to Yara as a child. 

Yara and Fadi’s marriage has a lot of similarities to my parents marriage. Two people who probably should not have gotten married, rushed into a relationship/marriage because of outside influences and circumstances. Every dialogue conversation between Fadi and Yara, like when Yara asked him to help with cleaning up transported me back to when I was a child and the same conversation would have between them. 

The overall depiction of mental health was stellar. The interaction with Yara and the first counselor, which does a wonderful job of portraying the gender dynamics when the therapist is male and the patient is female. The journey Yara goes on through this book to stop blaming herself for what happened during her childhood while actually sitting with her emotions is extremely powerful and should be required reading for anyone that has similar problems. 

I also think reading this book right now is more important than ever because what is happening to Palestine via the genocide perpetrated by Israel. This looks into the cultural trauma that a Palestinian-American can go through, not being able to go back to where they are from because of human atrocities delivered by an entire country is sickening. 

While I don’t think that everyone who reads this will be impacted like I was, I still would recommend this book to everyone because of the subject matter and it’s current relevance to the current situation in Palestine. 
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