A New Song by Sarah IsaiasMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
This is beautifully written to cross the boundaries of Islam and Judaism and Christianity and show a unity in all things. I love the list of beliefs on p. 97. The style is similar to The DaVinci code and makes it very difficult to put down, even for just a moment! There were a few minor editing errors but overall it is pretty solid. I loved the character development and the depth of the plot. I highly recommend this book!
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Its always nice when we don't want to put books down, thanks for post.
ReplyDeleteBrandi from Blkosiner’s Book Blog
I just finished reading the book "A New Song". I think overall it had a nice message of unification and promoting peace between Arabs and Jews. But I felt the characters were too naive and unrealistic. Also Islam was targeted in a really bad way specially with all the Madrid bombings.
ReplyDeleteThe poem was a nice symbol specially that it didn't exist in the end. It was biast towards Judaism. And I thought history was too much involved in the story, it felt more of a history book rather than a fictitious story. It promotes too much religion and controversies which I'm not sure how people would perceive as religion became a tool of power not faith even if we look back at the times of the crusade wars, it has always been about power not faith.
I just perceived the story differently as an Arab and as a Palestinian living in the Levant countries near the occupied territories. Unification and co-existing between Jews and Arabs is impossible because if we look at the facts, Zionists and religious Jewish fanatics living in Palestine will never have peace with the Palestinians. It's a lost cause. Many people died, many Palestinians exiled all around the world. The approach of the story was too naive and hard to believe. And I also understood clearly that the whole exploration of the Abraham traditions and Judaism was more dominant and on the other hand the Islamic exploration of the Andalus and other historical facts were all used and exploited to promote the existence of a Jewish state and that they "belong" in the Palestinian lands based on Hebrew scriptures history and beliefs not on actual facts. I also thought the coincidence and destiny of this Jewish doctor meeting the Muslim poet was too cliche and unrealistic.
The message to me was clear, unification and co-existance between Arabs and Jews but how so? .when in the real world...Palestinians get kicked out of their lands and an Apartheid wall exists in the west bank. When segregation, settlements and racism is everywhere. It felt like the Arabs in the story were the ones who don't want co-existence. And the male character "Yakub" was so naive and with no sincerity or compassion towards his people. I understand he fell in love with "Rachel" but it could've been nice to see a different vibe from him at first, and not immediately decide to travel along with a complete stranger in spite of her saving his life at the beginning. As much as the historical facts were involved in the book, the characters were weakly structured.