Our first book review

There are Rivers in the Sky by Elif Shafak

For our first bookclub, our bookworm friend Jo chose Elif Shafak’s recent novel, There are Rivers in the Sky. There was a lot of love for this book, particularly for Shafak’s very beautiful writing. It was also noted that - given the different time zones, places and quite different themes - the staggering amount of research the author must’ve undertaken to write this novel.

The book follows three different stories, set in different places and times, joined together by a single drop of water. The first story is of Arthur, a Victorian slum-dwelling child with the gift of an incredible memory and an obsession with Mesopotamia. The second is Narin, a young Yazidi girl who comes into contact with ISIS in Iraq in 2014. The third is Zeleekah, a hydrologist living in London, discovering herself and dealing with a difficult past.

The characters are carefully revealed over the course of the book, and you find yourself building strands between the characters, even though they have such different lives.

There are some serious and difficult themes in the book, it was intense at times, but the book is more rich for addressing these issues and dealing with them in a careful, non-apologetic way. Highly recommend.