PositiveThe Washington PostAntonius creates vivid characters and mercilessly skewers British imperial life. But her greatest strength is lush descriptive prose. On every page there are jeweled sentences ... The plot is set in a vaguely framed story that takes place in Beirut many decades later, at the outset of the Lebanese civil war ... There is a gorgeous thread about a pet hawk, but it ultimately gets lost in the shuffle ... This device has rich potential, even if it is confusing and underdeveloped ... While Antonius’s novel falls short on the level of plotting, it remains a noteworthy literary achievement for its ability to re-create the world of Palestine on the eve of its destruction as it might have appeared to people living through it.
