Stephanie Jane recenzis Sky So Close to Us de Shahla Ujayli
Poignant but baffling
3 steloj
I wish I had known, prior to starting to read A Sky So Close To Us, that its structure is not the kind of linear narrative that I am used to reading. Instead we readers are led by a meandering route to discover a seemingly disparate crowd of people whose lives take place decades apart. They are all linked of course, but it took me nearly half the novel to understand these often tenuous connections and, by then, I wasn't always even sure that I would keep reading! Ujayli introduces each new character by giving a lot of their backstory and, once their section has passed, we might not see a specific person again, but a hundred pages later we do see their cousin or their former neighbour! I found this baffling to say the least so, while I appreciated the central storyline of Joumane life, I struggled to also …
I wish I had known, prior to starting to read A Sky So Close To Us, that its structure is not the kind of linear narrative that I am used to reading. Instead we readers are led by a meandering route to discover a seemingly disparate crowd of people whose lives take place decades apart. They are all linked of course, but it took me nearly half the novel to understand these often tenuous connections and, by then, I wasn't always even sure that I would keep reading! Ujayli introduces each new character by giving a lot of their backstory and, once their section has passed, we might not see a specific person again, but a hundred pages later we do see their cousin or their former neighbour! I found this baffling to say the least so, while I appreciated the central storyline of Joumane life, I struggled to also contend with the myriad of side stories. Perhaps if I had a better knowledge of modern Syrian history and geography I would have found it easier to place each individual in place and time.
I could see distinct parallels between Joumane's endurance of her cancer treatment and Syria's endurance of its seemingly endless wars and invasions. From reading A Sky So Close To Us I could see that pretty much every generation since the 1940s has found itself under attack. What really shone through Ujayli's prose too is a poignant melancholy for the now destroyed Aleppo and Raqqa. Early on she mentions the Turkish idea of 'huzum' that I learned about through Orhan Pamuk's Istanbul and I felt the same emotion here. I would have loved to have experienced the same depth of feeling for the minor characters as I did whilst spending time with Joumane. She speaks to us in the first person so I felt very much with her, but her recounting of historical anecdotes and family memories seemed so much drier and I often then found myself drifting. I understand that the drifting together and apart of so many people is a direct result of so much unrest within the region and depicting this movement as Shahla does is an accurate reflection of Joumane's circumstances and experience. However I think personally I needed a more focused narrative to fully appreciate what A Sky So Close To Us has to say.