Tuesday, June 28, 2016

Chronicle of a Last Summer by Yasmine El Rashidi

Thia lyrical novel gives three snapshots of a young Egyptian woman's life.  At six she spends her summer trying to make sense of the chaos that occurs during the inauguration of a new president.  People and houses and shops disappear in the night, her cousin speaks of revolution and her father is gone.   Later, she is a college student envisioning a film that will somehow explain this chaos.  Finally she is a writer and her father returns.  The book is interesting and the tone is soft and ephereal.  It left me with a sense of disconnect and a lot of unanswered questions.  I would be interested to know of this is the author's style or was just employed to set the to e of this particular novel.