PositiveTimes Literary Supplement (UK)Boyd’s books are so enjoyable that it’s hard for us to resent the tricks being played on us, even as we find ourselves constantly reaching for Google, wanting to know what is and isn’t real ... Boyd is also gently mocking the tedium of many lives deemed worthy of biography.
Christina Lamb
RaveThe Guardian (UK)At times, Lamb worries that she is being intrusive, but she is also careful not to be credulous. An experienced journalist, she can tell when something doesn’t smell right – one Rohingya woman in a camp in Bangladesh has a long story that doesn’t add up. In the age of #MeToo, the impetus is to believe women and on the whole, she – quite rightly – does, while never losing her journalistic rigour. The litany of pain she recounts is all too believeable. I know because I have heard it too ... silence is the women’s worst enemy, and that’s why, while some may be tempted to turn away from the horror, this is such an important book.
Marwan Hisham, illustrated by Molly Crabapple
PositiveThe New York Times Book ReviewCrabapple used vibrant, sometimes lurid color in the original magazine pieces, but the black-and-white illustrations in the book, carefully blotched and smudged, invite more thought ... Hisham, who, after attending a religious school in a village near Aleppo, became fascinated by European soccer and literature, is the ideal interlocutor for Western readers.
