recently read: against the loveless world
25: by susan abulhawa and cantoras by carolina de robertis
Knowing what book someone is reading and what parts they resonate with most can be so intimate. It reveals their interests, where their head is at, and what excerpts are so significant that they will mark up a page because they think it’s worth revisiting at a later time. I’m fascinated by what books others gravitate towards and I find that it helps me get to know them better and gives me a small glimpse into who they are at their core. No one asked for these book reviews, but maybe it’s my way of showing who I am and what I’m interested in – beyond the clothes, the products, and my career. Or at the very least, encourage some to look up from their phones and instead towards the pages of a good book.
Book no. 27 of 2023
Against the Loveless World - Susan Abulhawa
A story that immediately sucks you in, following rich, complex and unapologetic characters who live in the gray area of a world that demands we see them in one way. The main character, Nahr, is a Palestinian woman who defies societal expectations and lives with the choices she makes. The book takes us through her journey through Kuwait, Jordan, Palestine and eventually, a prison in Israel. It is full of history, celebrates Palestinian culture and shares perspectives often untold. And at the heart of this story, is one of love — of self, of family and of deep, intimate romance. It is one I highly recommend — one that will challenge and also enrich you. I couldn’t put it down.
Underlined quotes:
“My mother was a maker of beauty, a brilliant custodian of culture and history. And I was the ungrateful daughter who had not understood that until now.”
“I remember the shock of it, then questioning how it is that death can be life’s only assurance and yet also its greatest, most devastating surprise.”
“What’s it like to be a whale? To live in water. To be the biggest creature on earth, still vulnerable to a small man’s greed.”
“The struggle itself is not against them as a people, but against what infects them—the idea that they are a better form of human, that God prefers them, that they are inherently a superior race, and we are disposable.”
“There was no driveway, as Bilal never carved more than a narrow footpath to the house… ‘It makes it harder for military jeeps and bulldozers to get to us,’ he explained.”
Book no. 28 of 2023
Cantoras - Carolina De Robertis
A really beautiful novel that takes place during 1970s Uruguay during an oppressive dictatorship. It’s a book with so much important history and is a celebration of female friendship, queer love and chosen family. I loved getting to know each character and shed tears of both sadness and joy while reading this book. I think it would make such a good movie or tv show adaptation — we need more stories like this to be read and watched. Highly recommend.
Underlined quotes:
“The world was more than she had known, even if only for this instant, even if only in this place.”
“It was strange, she thought, how you could live all your life in a home defined by people who loved you and took care of you and shared ancestors with you and yet did not entirely see you.”
“Perhaps it cheapened the present moment to burden it with thoughts of a future that didn’t and couldn’t exist.”
“She carried so much clamor inside. And what to do with it? How to be? Why did life put so much inside a woman and then keep her confined to smallness?”
“We make space for each other. We don’t wait for anyone else to do it.”
“It was the first time anyone had done this for her pain, removed it from comparison, given it scope and space.”
“She was fifty-two years old, larger, heavier, rounder in some places and flattened in others, yet steady in a new way, as if time had rooted her in the soil of truth.”
“In telling stories that are largely absent from formal histories or from the great noise of mainstream culture, I never forget that there are thousands if not millions of people whose names we may never learn, whose names are lost in time, who made our contemporary lives possible through acts of courage. Their stories have all too often gone unrecorded, but I am here today, and able to speak, because of them.”