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A review by leahtylerthewriter
City of a Thousand Gates by Rebecca Sacks
5.0
4.5 stars rounded up for Goodreads.
"The entire place has an oppressive and primitive air, every woman's body angrily obscured by various orthodoxies."
Weaving together the voices and experiences of over 20 characters, the humanity, injustice, complexity, and multitude of costs of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is inflated with living, breathing life.
A 14-year-old Israeli girl is stabbed to death in her bed. A 15-year-old Palestinian boy is beaten to death at the mall. And thus the springboard for Sacks's probing and violent dive into one of the most complicated dynamics in the modern world is launched.
My aim is not to break down the politics, it is to review the storytelling. Sacks opened her mouth wide, shoved in the entire conflict, and slowly masticated on the reality the battle over this sacred land has cost people. To proclaim it an ambitious endeavor is to understate the obvious.
Sacks did not judge her characters, for they did plenty of that on their own. Instead she humanized their similarities. The need to love and be loved. To protect one's children from harm. The necessity of passing down tradition to the future generations. The need to possess autonomy over one's choices and trajectory in life.
Weaving in and out of many points of view and time-frames, I was drawn into the interconnected reality she spun together. It takes quite a bit of skill to represent that many voices without confusion and, with the exception of a few side characters she never circled back to, she achieved it. I spent much of this book feeling apprehensive and fearful and certain at any moment mayhem was going to ensue, a mere flash of what it's like to reside in this region.
Sex, when manipulated correctly in literature, can be used as an intimate vehicle with which to peer directly into a character's interior. Sacks amply employed it with skill and purpose. Ultimately, however, I was left with the pervasive sense that regardless of which people a woman belongs to, she really only matters when giving birth to her husband's child.
"The entire place has an oppressive and primitive air, every woman's body angrily obscured by various orthodoxies."
Weaving together the voices and experiences of over 20 characters, the humanity, injustice, complexity, and multitude of costs of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is inflated with living, breathing life.
A 14-year-old Israeli girl is stabbed to death in her bed. A 15-year-old Palestinian boy is beaten to death at the mall. And thus the springboard for Sacks's probing and violent dive into one of the most complicated dynamics in the modern world is launched.
My aim is not to break down the politics, it is to review the storytelling. Sacks opened her mouth wide, shoved in the entire conflict, and slowly masticated on the reality the battle over this sacred land has cost people. To proclaim it an ambitious endeavor is to understate the obvious.
Sacks did not judge her characters, for they did plenty of that on their own. Instead she humanized their similarities. The need to love and be loved. To protect one's children from harm. The necessity of passing down tradition to the future generations. The need to possess autonomy over one's choices and trajectory in life.
Weaving in and out of many points of view and time-frames, I was drawn into the interconnected reality she spun together. It takes quite a bit of skill to represent that many voices without confusion and, with the exception of a few side characters she never circled back to, she achieved it. I spent much of this book feeling apprehensive and fearful and certain at any moment mayhem was going to ensue, a mere flash of what it's like to reside in this region.
Sex, when manipulated correctly in literature, can be used as an intimate vehicle with which to peer directly into a character's interior. Sacks amply employed it with skill and purpose. Ultimately, however, I was left with the pervasive sense that regardless of which people a woman belongs to, she really only matters when giving birth to her husband's child.