PositiveThe New York Times Book ReviewBaker delicately crafts the internal lives of these very different people, whose longings for connections beyond themselves are forever missing the mark ... Melanie remains in the background of her own story, quietly letting difficult conversations pass her by and second-guessing both her intuitions and actions. While passivity of this kind might be true to life, portraying it like this in fiction — generally and without counterpoint — pulls energy from the narrative at large ... In pleasing contrast to the American couple, who seem flattened by their self-delusion, the couple in Rome are brought off the page by their complexity. Baker’s Rome is vivid and gritty, and unrecognizable to the casual tourist. The author is careful to withhold much of Ayoub’s experience, wisely avoiding voyeuristic details of the extradition or torture. Instead, we follow a man who suffers but also seeks a path forward, however narrow and winding ... I felt for her the immediate empathy one feels for a well-written character, and it is clear that Baker did, too. How we take that empathy forward is up to us; fiction only makes the introductions.
Susan Abulhawa
PositiveThe New York Times Book ReviewExhausted writers sometimes try to simplify their trade by boiling all stories down to only two essential trajectories: Someone comes to town, or someone moves away. But Susan Abulhawa’s third novel, Against the Loveless World, disproves this reductive hyperbole, artfully looping together comings and goings, entrances and exoduses, burials and birthdays in a humming narrative of human movement ... A rebellious spirit propels this story of statelessness, but the unburdened tone can also come off as unrealistic ... Known for her beautiful and urgent chronicling of the Palestinian struggle in fiction and poetry, Abulhawa skillfully situates Nahr in a life of friendship and family that is consistently upset by geopolitical changes and a volatile police state. In this sense, Nahr is a 21st-century everywoman, strong in her own mind but angry about how little control she has over her own life. Given the persistent attacks on her self-determination, it is easy to understand Nahr’s commitment to justice at any cost. But it’s less easy to feel it. Her toughness and sass are rarely counterbalanced with moments of vulnerability, or grief. The self-reflection in the novel often comes from the head rather than the heart, unidimensional interior monologues flecked with facts that serve more as platforms to explain the plight of Palestinian refugees, sex workers, liberation fighters. Nahr encounters so many tragedies that she can at times come off as a composite of women and the issues that plague them in this region, the novel too rarely pausing in her moments of weakness and exhaustion that might have distinguished her, illuminated the cost of passion for the powerless ... Those forced to leave the places of their birth to live elsewhere then have to tell stories to the people they encounter there. Not all communities are willing to listen to these messy narratives of displacement. In our current climate of isolationism, the transnational storyteller must do more than entertain — she must educate. In response to this demand, Abulhawa has created a spirited protagonist who lives invisibly and in opposition to her \'loveless world,; telling her own story on her own terms lest either her comings or goings be forgotten.
