A review by thisotherbookaccount
The Beekeeper: Rescuing the Stolen Women of Iraq by Dunya Mikhail
4.0
Rating The Beekeeper by Dunya Mikhail is difficult, and this is not the first time this year I am feeling this way. The stories told in this book are compelling and brutal. These are first-hand accounts of the horrors of ISIS — or Daesh, as they are referred to in this book — told (mainly) from the perspectives of the women that were kidnapped, imprisoned, enslaved and raped. Then there is the titular Beekeeper, or Abdullah, who's made it his life's mission to rescue as many people from the clutches of ISIS as possible by buying and smuggling them out one by one.
By all accounts, this should be a shoo-in to the five-star hall of fame. However, like many similar books that I read this year, I find it hard to give it that final 0.5 star to push it over the line. While the stories here are incredibly compelling and moving, the structure of the book is a little piecemeal. Majority of the book are transcripts of conversations between Mikhail and Abdullah or one of the victims of war. And there isn't a discernible structure to the book as well. Instead of telling the story of one survivor in a chapter, sometimes you get three — or none at all. Sometimes the author inserts her own memories of childhood in Iraq. There is even a strange chapter where she recounts a dream of her speaking with Pluto (yes, the planet).
This reminds me of the time when I read A Grief Observed by CS Lewis, written after Lewis had lost his wife. The book was written in long hand and published under a pseudonym. The content of the book is raw and unadulterated. CS Lewis committed all his thoughts, doubts and emotions onto the page without holding anything back, which makes for an insightful book about a man dealing with his grief and loss. With that said, maybe that’s why his editor thought it’d be prudent to keep as much of the book intact as possible. Meddling with the raw thoughts and emotions of a grieving author is just not something you want to do as an editor. You don’t want to take the draft back to the author and say, hey, Lewis, you know this chapter over here? It really slows the book down — you just don’t do that. The result is a book that, while compelling, feels at times a little all over the place.
I don’t think The Beekeeper is quite as bad in that regard. I think Mikhail does a fairly good job at keeping the narrative straight. It’s just that, since she is predominantly known as a poet, the muscles in her brain is perhaps tuned differently from prose writers. There is something a little off about the way she structured the whole book. I can’t quite put my finger on the issue, but that is what I feel whenever I read a book that’s been written by a poet of some kind. Something just feels off, like there isn’t a cadence to what I am reading.
With that said, this is still a highly recommended book. It is even more compelling considering that most of these events happened in very recent history. The violence here were not recorded on video and posted online for the world to see. We saw drownings and beheadings of soldiers and ‘infidels’, but the women that were kidnapped, imprisoned, enslaved and raped were never shown. So to read these accounts, to me, is important. It gives perspectives to the conflicts that are happening in the Middle-east right now.
What I love even more about this book is that it doesn’t try to vilify a religion or gender — something that many books I have read recently tend to do, especially those that concern this part of the world. Instead, Muslims are often depicted as kind and brave people, and men and women both help to rescue these women from ISIS. If there is one takeaway from this book, it is the fact that humans are capable of the greatest evil, but also the greatest kindness as well. I just wished that this book had read less like a record or documentation.
By all accounts, this should be a shoo-in to the five-star hall of fame. However, like many similar books that I read this year, I find it hard to give it that final 0.5 star to push it over the line. While the stories here are incredibly compelling and moving, the structure of the book is a little piecemeal. Majority of the book are transcripts of conversations between Mikhail and Abdullah or one of the victims of war. And there isn't a discernible structure to the book as well. Instead of telling the story of one survivor in a chapter, sometimes you get three — or none at all. Sometimes the author inserts her own memories of childhood in Iraq. There is even a strange chapter where she recounts a dream of her speaking with Pluto (yes, the planet).
This reminds me of the time when I read A Grief Observed by CS Lewis, written after Lewis had lost his wife. The book was written in long hand and published under a pseudonym. The content of the book is raw and unadulterated. CS Lewis committed all his thoughts, doubts and emotions onto the page without holding anything back, which makes for an insightful book about a man dealing with his grief and loss. With that said, maybe that’s why his editor thought it’d be prudent to keep as much of the book intact as possible. Meddling with the raw thoughts and emotions of a grieving author is just not something you want to do as an editor. You don’t want to take the draft back to the author and say, hey, Lewis, you know this chapter over here? It really slows the book down — you just don’t do that. The result is a book that, while compelling, feels at times a little all over the place.
I don’t think The Beekeeper is quite as bad in that regard. I think Mikhail does a fairly good job at keeping the narrative straight. It’s just that, since she is predominantly known as a poet, the muscles in her brain is perhaps tuned differently from prose writers. There is something a little off about the way she structured the whole book. I can’t quite put my finger on the issue, but that is what I feel whenever I read a book that’s been written by a poet of some kind. Something just feels off, like there isn’t a cadence to what I am reading.
With that said, this is still a highly recommended book. It is even more compelling considering that most of these events happened in very recent history. The violence here were not recorded on video and posted online for the world to see. We saw drownings and beheadings of soldiers and ‘infidels’, but the women that were kidnapped, imprisoned, enslaved and raped were never shown. So to read these accounts, to me, is important. It gives perspectives to the conflicts that are happening in the Middle-east right now.
What I love even more about this book is that it doesn’t try to vilify a religion or gender — something that many books I have read recently tend to do, especially those that concern this part of the world. Instead, Muslims are often depicted as kind and brave people, and men and women both help to rescue these women from ISIS. If there is one takeaway from this book, it is the fact that humans are capable of the greatest evil, but also the greatest kindness as well. I just wished that this book had read less like a record or documentation.