CW: sexual assault (off screen), death, basically think refugee crisis
Most of my review of this book will end up being a rambling discourse on who gets to write novels, identity-wise. This book, about a Syrian refugee who was a beekeeper in Aleppo and is now attempting to escape to the UK where his cousin has settled, was written by a white (British?) fiction novelist who, to be fair, volunteered in the refugee camps outside of/in Athens, I believe. Edited to add: she is also the daughter of Cypriot refugees.
At the outset, you know you’re in for a bit of semi-gratuitous scenes of suffering and human misery. This is not untrue! Lefteri must have had a hit list of things that happen to refugees which she then methodically placed in various timelines such that she couldn’t be faulted for misattributing or painting over the truth of the situation. Said timelines are deliberately non-linear, which has the curious dual effect of portraying the miasma/brain fog of being displaced while also reassuring the reader that things will be okay because we know that Nuri and Afra, in some not-so-distant future, are puttering around a house in the UK waiting for their final paperwork to be completed. If anything, the latter helps you process the tragedy—unlike some other books, like The Nickel Boys, which were so unrelentingly grimdark that your brain shuts down from over saturation.
So, all’s well that ends well, no? If you are willing and able to soak in this tale of small human triumph in the face of overwhelming adversity (and enjoy some well written sentences along the way) you should be fine. And yet I find myself a bit torn given that I learnt after the fact that Lefteri is herself not an owner of a Syrian experience, or a refugee experience, except as through a volunteer with a UNICEF refugee camp. Now, of course, I have not done any such thing and am strictly a “so terrible, here is money” type participant in this massive, ongoing human migration and disaster. And on some level I don’t think that all work should be strictly #ownvoices. And more to the fact, I have zero clue as to the availability of works (fiction, especially, but also nonfiction) that speak to the experience from an insider’s perspective…which is why I am hesitant but happy to give this novel four stars for how it made me feel. Perhaps Lefteri’s book is not the issue, and it’s actually the fact that this is the only book about Syria I can recall having read. Perhaps this book is, actually, going to be helpful because it’ll reaffirm my financial commitment to the cause, which as we all know has been going on long enough that it has lost its sexy appeal.
All I can say is, I’m not free and clearly happy that this novel was written by a not#ownvoices authors. But I’m also not immediately rejecting it and downgrading it either!