Despite its historical rigor, this thoughtful novel struggles under the weight of its ponderous prose.
A young Egyptian man becomes increasingly radicalized in his devotion to Islam and struggles to resist the call to violence in Hinc’s novel.
Taher is born in Ismailia, Egypt, in the midst of great violence during the Six-Day War in 1967 with Israel; he comes into the world on the heels of a fraternal twin sister, Aisha. He is a well-behaved, studious boy, impressing his family by memorizing the Quran by the time he is 6 years old. His bond with his sister, even as they drift apart as years pass, is mystically profound, depicted in the sentimentally overwrought language that typifies the author’s tortured prose: “Images are like twins. How are the twins the same? How are the twins different? Where is the summit, where does it all come together? The lightness of the mind overcomes the body, the lightness of the body overcomes the struggle—absolute freedom, absolute lightness beyond time, absolute understanding and connection.” Taher is first exposed to a mixture of Islamic radicalism and political dissent by his cousin Ahmed who, along with hundreds of others, is sent to prison after the assassination of Egypt’s president Anwar Sadat. Taher eventually travels to Afghanistan and joins the mujahedeen to fight against the Soviet invasion—though by moving to Germany to attend college, he seems to express a desire to live a normal life as well, a peacefully bourgeois existence similar to his sister’s. However, he begins to lean into extremist ideas about political resistance, an organic development intelligently charted by the author.
Taher is a memorable protagonist—deeply thoughtful and morally sensitive, he disdains killing despite his political commitments: “But killing someone is killing yourself, don’t you see?…It always comes back and stays with you. Death comes back. There is no escape. By killing, you poison the blood of your children. There is no life after killing. Not for you. Not for your children. Not for their children. Ever. Killing someone without killing yourself is impossible.” Hinc’s portrayal of him as a saintly, blameless child who grows into an adult capable of hijacking an airplane is delicately rendered—it is never quite clear what ultimately motivates his transformation (is it a genuine religious calling or the pain he experiences as a result of the deaths of his parents?). However, the prose is leaden, overheated, and littered with clichés. The tone is prophetic—the omniscient narrator imparts philosophical insights that read as condescendingly didactic. The reader may sense that the novel is intended as a parable of some kind, though it is never quite clear what lesson is meant to be gleaned. As a psychological snapshot of radicalization, this is a subtle work, one that astutely highlights the many ways in which Egyptians could feel betrayed, not only by Western powers more interested in their resources than their freedom, but also by their own leaders. However, as a work of dramatic literature, Hinc’s novel falls flat—her sermonizing hinders the reader’s full immersion in the story.
Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 9781951508340
Page Count: -
Publisher: Plamen Press
Review Posted Online: June 8, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A heartfelt and engaging Christian parable about the mechanisms of divine will.
A novella focuses on the hidden workings of God in the lives of ordinary people.
This story by Paul and Bland opens with a seemingly incongruous sight: Two men eating their lunches on a bench in a freezing downpour. And the more readers learn about the men, the more bizarre things get. The younger-looking one is Charlie, a substitute mail carrier who was recently finishing up his route when he suddenly died. And his companion is Everett, an unconventional angel Charlie sometimes suspects may be a kind of substandard model. Charlie knows that it’s part of Everett’s purpose to “show how the mighty hand of God worked in people’s lives.” Witnessing this is a step in Charlie’s own post-death journey. As for Charlie himself, “he could feel evil and how it tried to latch on to anyone within reach”—the diametric opposite of the heaven he had experienced, a place that “pulsated with love.” This eager reaching of evil to seize everyone around it informs the meetings Charlie and Everett quickly have—with Martin, the owner of a local bike shop; Eva, a postal worker already frustrated on her first day on the job; middle-aged waitress Karen, who “went about her life without realizing she was a mighty warrior, a saint who was troubling the Enemy’s plans”; and others. With clear, inviting prose and remarkable concision, the authors draw readers into these separate lives and twine their tales together. The fantasy backstory of angels is seamlessly woven into the well-realized depictions of regular town life, and the chapters are paced with a page-turning sensitivity. One prominent atheist character is portrayed as the thinnest straw-man caricature of an unbeliever, but readers willing to overlook that flaw will find a surprisingly complex and heartwarming tale in the rest of the book.
A heartfelt and engaging Christian parable about the mechanisms of divine will.Pub Date: Feb. 22, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-982221-36-2
Page Count: 104
Publisher: BalboaPress
Review Posted Online: May 8, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A sometimes-evocative but inconsistent set of poems.
Lahey’s debut poetry collection follows the speaker’s lifelong struggles with depression, alcohol abuse, and loneliness.
This set’s works are most effective when the speaker discusses his friends, family, and childhood, as those subjects yield personal details, clear images, and a cohesive story. In “Pops,” for instance, the speaker shares memories of his father, “Skating on a pond with frogs, / Racing at the back of the trailers, / Reading the morning comics.” These images make the larger sentiments (“the best damn father a boy could have”) feel more meaningful. “The Wolf” points out “It really is simple: / The wolf you will be, / The black or the white, / The one that you feed,” while in “The White Wolf,” the speaker asserts: “The white wolf is me”—essentially, one who chooses to fight against his vices, instead of giving into them. This essential choice provides the collection’s central main theme. The poet often achieves the tone of a nursery rhyme in his works, which is disturbing and even haunting in the more hard-edged poems. On the other hand, some verses pay insufficient attention to detail; in “12,” for instance, the speaker broadly says, “I felt so alive and cool. / Little did I know, still a young boy, / That I was nothing but a naive fool,” which makes it difficult to actually visualize the boy. This collection might have been stronger if the speaker had shown how his emotions spurred him to action, instead of merely stating them, and allowed readers to witness his pain and suffering firsthand. In “Life,” the speaker relies on clichéd phrases (“Here one day / Gone the next”; “Life is too short”); these might have lingered with readers if the rest of the poems were stronger, instead of relying on vague, basic concepts of light and dark.
A sometimes-evocative but inconsistent set of poems.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-66320-399-1
Page Count: 138
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: March 11, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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