Jo Glanville

I rated this book based upon the average rating of the 16 stories. I felt super conflicted giving this collection 3/5 stars because when a story was good and hit for me, it REALLY HIT, like with Me (the Bitch) and Bustanji by Selma Dabbagh, which is a short story that takes place during the 1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, and we follow a teenage girl through that experience. It mixes the experience of the political unrest with the coming of age experiences of being a young girl, like show more consciously changing your writing style and the experiences of ignoring catcallers in such a fun and interesting way, and like in Dates and Bitter Coffee by Donia ElAmal Ismaeel, where the main character, a mother of a militarized son set in Gaza who ends up being killed in a conflict in Gaza, and this story critically explores the severe consequences of radicalization and the hollow nature of "matyrdom" behind organizations like the Jihad that was so very poignant. But when it missed, it missed HARD, like in A Thread Snaps by Huzama Habayeb, which just seems to be a short story about a teenage girl masturbating with the water that she washed her family's clothes in, and if there was any other meaning or allegory to it, I seemed to have missed it. Another example is A Single Metre by Raeda Taha, a short story of a woman hopping into a stranger's car to cross the Palestine-Israel checkpoint, only for her to jump into the vehicle of two individuals who plan to bomb the checkpoint.
I don't know that I would recommend this entire collection, but I can recommend individual stories from it.

my blog post: https://vampiricprose.dreamwidth.org/535.html show less

It’s been hard to set aside time to read. I started this book a few weeks ago and just finished it. Obviously the topic is timely. Given the nature of 10/7 and its aftermath I’m disappointed how little the book deals with Left and political antisemitism and radical Islam. Still, except for Tom Segev’s rambling contribution, the essays are solid and informative. My biggest takeaway is that the book, published two years ago, already feels dated. As if even people who took antisemitism show more seriously lacked a sense of urgency. As if no one thought a 10/7 could happen or expected the full-throated cheers it would elicit. No one but David Nirenberg, who asks how Jews or Israel became “a convincing explanation of what is wrong with the world.” That’s the question that faces all of us—and that’s killing some of us. show less

I think that the true test of a short story collection rarely lies in its overall quality (especially in anthologies of various authors), but rather in the moments, or stories, that take your breath away. This book simply didn't have any. There were definitely some interesting writers in here, but none that I will be rushing off to read more of. The subject matter varies between suicide bombers and armed fighters, to more domestic stories in which the intifada serves as a backdrop, or is show more barely mentioned at all. It was these latter that I liked the most, providing more subtle insights into what the authors see as contemporary Palestinian life, but this was, ultimately, a fairly average and instantly forgettable collection of stories. show less