There is no doubt that this is written as a piece of fiction and preys on the emotions of the reader to sympathize with the characters to the degree that one can only be a tyrant if one doesnt feel sorry for or align oneself with the writer. This is the same fallacious tactic adopted by the authors inspiration (Khaled Hosseini). It does what Hosseinis books do by cashing in on sympathy for children (within the first few pages a child is blown to bits by a landmine), which already makes me suspicious of a writers motives. Anyone who preys on my emotions in that way is counting on raising sympathy and manipulating emotions to propel the text rather than relying on good storytelling (imo), which, for me, ends up caricaturizing the characters rather than making them sympathetic. What strikes me more is that this book has brought up the issue of who has the right to write anothers pain. This is intriguing to me. I know little about Palestine or Israel beyond what we learned in history classes, and yet I am very uncomfortable with a privileged white American writing a story of someone elses pain and claiming this will then save them b/c her books have the potential to draw attention to the pain of the Palestinians. She seems to have learned little about identity politics in all of her education. Her story as a white American observing pain and feeling helpless to stop it would have been just as compelling and would have also brought attention to the plight of Palestinians, rather than adopting the identity of a Palestinian man. Its the White American savior to the rescue mentality that I am uncomfortable with, not the veracity of the text itself (about which I cannot judge since I havent finished reading). Its the reason I was uncomfortable with Memoirs of a Geisha, too. There is an arrogance inherent in any writer who believes her role is to speak on behalf of anyone else without that subject requesting her intervention. Had she ghost-written the text, I would have been much more comfortable than a fictionalized reality. There are better ways to bring about attention to an issue than to co-opt someone elses voice and life. That said, if you liked The Kite Runner, you will likely love this book as well. The author herself says she was inspired to write this after reading that book. I feel perhaps its unfair to rate a books merit on how much I think an author is naive based on having lived quite a privileged life (while claiming to be aware of her privilege, yet being so clueless as to write this so as to save the Palestinians), so I am not going to provide stars for this, but will continue to think about how I feel about who gets to write whose story. - One of my reader at Goodreads
Posted on: Sun, 17 Aug 2014 07:24:15 +0000
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