Book 16 - Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie

Reading date - June 2020

This is the first book where I'm writing the review as I am reading it.  For someone who says they don't read a lot of books on kindle, I seem to have gone out of my way to prove how untrue that is.  However, these are uNpReCeDeNtEd TiMeS and all is most definitely not well in Gotham City.  

(This is the first book I'm reading on my actual kindle..not my iPad.  My kindle is 8 years old and I'm going to start using it a lot more as I'm quite precious about my iPad).

This was a "by chance" purchase. I had no plan to buy this but then saw it was on offer.  

My main critique of this book is the way in which the author constructs sentences.  Second, the form.  I am not sure where the author learnt how to form sentences but this is the first book I've ever read where the sentences are weird, I have had to read more than five of them more than twice to figure out what she actually means.  It's not just me, either, I sent the sentences in question to friends and they all said the same.  It's like the words are there but they have either been used in the wrong order, the grammar is off or different words should have been used.  She also has a weird habit of saying something like "John worked with Parvaiz in the shop", then goes on for pages about someone else so you forget the single reference to John.  The next sentence will then say "John phoned Parvaiz with some vital info", so you have to flick back pages to remember who John was.

I also don't understand why so much was made of the fact that both girls wore headscaves and how one liked a turban type whereas the other went more traditional.   Pointless details like that just take up pages for no reason, setting up scenes that firstly, lead nowhere and secondly, don't add anything to the story.  The story centres around the following people: Isma, Parvaiz, Aneeka, Karamat Lone and Eamonn Lone.  The first three are siblings, Isma being the elder sibling to twins Parvaiz and Aneeka.  Karamat is the father of Eamonn.

The first two chapters are about Isma and are pointless. They are a set-up to the main story, that story being the same even if the first two chapters weren't there.  The chapters focus around Isma and her reaches in academia, but this leads nowhere.  If you start reading at chapter 3, you're not at a loss.

Thirdly, some of the situations are super far fetched and would never ever happen in the real world.  How would you chase someone to the tube, ten minutes after they've left and get on not just the same tube but also the same carriage??  How too, would two low paid immigrants be living in the same apartment block as the son of the Home Secretary who has around the clock watch?

 

On my first day of reading this book, I stayed up until 2 am and polished off a good 45% of this book.  There is so much mystery in this book, I'm nearly halfway through at this point and only now have true intentions come out but I feel it's going to be a rollercoaster until the end.

I liken it to be smacked in the face with wet fish from every direction whilst simultaneously trying to juggle. The juggling seems to have been mastered for now but I get the feeling there are a lot of fish to come.

The book is broken down into two chapters per person but even that, to me, is a bit weird as they all interlink, it's not like Run Lola Run, where everything intermingles and is told from original viewpoints..like that Simpsons episode with Linguo and the severed thumb (I know that's a parody of Run Lola Run).  Will I ever manage a post without referring to the Simpsons? No I won't, you son of a diddly.  The chapters could have just been numbered.

**

Right, I spanked the remaining 55% on day two.

You know sometimes you read a book and when something happens, you never ever see it coming but common sense tells you that this was the only thing that could happen? That happened to me with this book.

I was in awe of the idea and considered it a modern day tragedy..then I saw that it was basically a modern day rip-off of Antigone (which I will also be reading).  It was quite a lazy move as the characters had basically the same first name initial as Antigone.  That soured the book for me a bit.  In Antigone, you also have Creon..who here is the Home Secretary very heavily based on that slaphead Home Secretary we had before he stepped down.  Creon's son is called..Haemon..and in Home Fire, the son is called..Eamonn (the Anglicised version of Ayman).  

There is hardly any character development, the author just seems adamant to hammer home the fact that the kids are orphans and that Isma raised the younger two when her mum passed away.  It get a bit OTT in places because you don't need to be told it every single time any sibling thinks of the other. 

The second part is as much of a whirlwind as the first part and it has a very abrupt and obvious end.

For the grand sum of £1.29, I have no regrets but I have some issues with it.  I've also read some other reviews and it seems the reason it is such a hit is because it gives white people a view into a world they don't see.  To me, that is very dangerous!!  I am going to give some of her other books a whirl to see if they're more original..the minor discomfort of the confusing sentence structure is a tiny price to pay.