There Are Rivers In The Sky (2024) – Elif Shafak
This was sold to me as fantastic. One of my book club selected it as her book of the year but, I guess it just wasn’t for me.
Concept- I loved the concept of the droplet of water reincarnating. However, I am not sure the drop of water which falls on the Assyrian King early on truly follows through the whole story. I know the rain drop appears every know and then. We are, I think, supposed to translate it into the water theme, which does go throughout the story. But, I wanted rain drop to reappear more prominently at key moments.
Writing – There is no doubt that the prose is written beautifully. I particularly loved the story and description of how writing came about (p404 – p407):
“….the scribes across the region discover that words, once impressed on stone, live longer than those who have imagined them.” and
“To write is to free yourself from the constraints of place and time.”
Characters – I wanted to really love the characters we meet. I did like most of them but I wanted more. I think this would have resulted in the book being very long and perhaps they lost some of their deepness during the edit?
In fairness, I am more of a crime/ suspense gal but I do dip into this type of novel. They all get compared against The Heart’s Invisible Furies (John Boyne) for me and this one consistently sent me into afternoon nap mode until the last quarter when it picked up the pace I needed.