2024~6 Against the Loveless World

Susan Abulhawa. 2019.

This narrative about a Palestinian refugee turned terrorist was intriguing, if written in a somewhat disjointed fashion.  With flashbacks told from the perspective of her prison cell after capture, the story jumps around so you know the entire time where it is going. I found this distracting, especially since there was an obvious agenda for the book to present a sympathetic understanding her motivations for joining the Palestinian resistance.  I found myself distracted from the story, trying to predict when she would be radicalized.  Since the backstory did not seem to align with what the books hints at that landed her tortured and in an Israeli isolation cell, I found myself trying to put that together.  Maybe it is an accurate reflection of how someone is radicalized by oppression and maybe it isn't, but I found the book overplayed its hand in trying to convince me that it is reasonable to have been radicalized in this fashion, working so hard to get me to like and sympathize with her that I felt somewhat emotionally manipulated. I would have enjoyed the story more if it had backed off trying to fight so hard for the moral high ground.  All of that aside, I did find much of the writing mesmerizing and I most certainly did not want to stop reading.  I thought the story was at its best when describing people and places, with details about life in the Middle East that isn't often narrated in this fashion.  I was fully sucked into the story, even if I was resisting being taken in by it.  

​Recommend.

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