What do You think about The Cry Of The Dove (2007)?
If you read fiction to escape, then you read literature to fall in love, and with this love collect for your heart the fallible gestures of human judgment that mark a life as you would know it. The Cry of the Dove creates a woman easy to fall in love with because her life encompasses the most human effort: to stake and bound an identity amid conditions that are powerfully imbalanced, but quietly, lovingly, individual.The novel is constructed with evocative language and a speech broken only out the narrator’s mouth, for Salma Ibrahim El-Musa, sometimes Sally Asher, is nothing if not honest in the cruelty of her self-image, her Bedouin roots never not on display for judgment by her adopted England. Like her speech, scenes of the narrative are spilled like a bag of stones, skipping from present to past, but orchestrated in a way to muse here on religion, here on birth, here on desire, here on loss.I don't know what to say that would express why I think this novel is so beautiful, just as I don't know how to encapsulate a life to make it tell as well as it feels. But I am in love with this complicated Salma, as much as with what she would hope to lightly carry as with how steadily she would march toward grace.
—William
A beautiful unforgettable narrative. Every page is tinged with pain and shame. To imagine that young and debonair Salma following pregnancy, is abandoned by her man who would sing to her, 'your love took hold of my insides, my soul', is heart breaking. I simply could not contain myself when he hurled abuses of rejection upon her, walked away forever, only to leave her alone battling with agony and shame looming larger than life itself. That she should spend time within walls of protected confinement to give birth in shame, trade her home to a land of anonymity, suffer in quiet forbearance the misgivings of the land she took solace and refuge in, and finally be embraced generously by an Englishman whose love added meaning and freedom to her lost soul, is all meaningless when in foolish retrospection, she journeys back to her wretched forbidden land.Long after the book is read, closed and kept away, one is haunted with grief so great for days together. That Salma be shot between her eyes in cold blood, by her own vengeful brother comes to mind vividly and helplessly.
—Chon Rumthao
I picked this book based on the beautiful cover and seemingly interesting description on the back cover. Inside the book was a heart wrenching story that jumped around from one time period to another with each paragraph (not chapter). Maybe the disjointed, jumpy story is meant to show the reader the chaotic thoughts of Salma? Every few pages as the story jumped around and a character was revisited, I'd stop and wonder who it was and then keep reading and finally remember. In the end, the story I
—Michelle Hendricks
