A cinematic, edge-of-your-seat thriller.
Two Moroccan Dutch women are drawn into a deadly game when they engage the chaperoning services of a compatriot while on holiday in Rabat.
Tired of her monotonous life as a call-center worker in Rotterdam, Ilham Assouline decides a vacation in Morocco is just what she needs. Borrowing her sister’s passport since she doesn't have one of her own, Ilham convinces her friend Thouraya to come along. The two rent an Audi to get them around, but while the young women might have found Rotterdam stifling, the land of their ancestors provides no relief. Realizing that women in Morocco rarely travel alone, they engage the services of Saleh Benkassem, a fellow Moroccan Dutchman, to shield them from unsavory attention. Unfortunately, Saleh, who has made a life in the shadows, exploits the women’s vulnerability to his advantage. He introduces Ilham and Thouraya to a cripplingly poor family who want a better life for their son, Murat Idrissi. The women have a car, don’t they? Surely they can smuggle the young man through to Europe! Saleh assures Ilham and Thouraya that they will be paid for this service. Hesitant at first, Ilham is plagued by guilt over the family’s poverty. She and Thouraya eventually give in. But no good deed goes unpunished, and soon the women are in over their heads. Fluidly translated from Dutch and brilliantly paced, this slim novel delivers a high-voltage adrenaline rush while expertly weaving in commentary about displaced world citizens. The irony of their lives being circumscribed in different ways in both Rotterdam and Morocco is not lost on Ilham and Thouraya. In an expert twist, Thouraya uses precisely those constraints to the women’s advantage.
A cinematic, edge-of-your-seat thriller.Pub Date: Jan. 5, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-950354-36-8
Page Count: 112
Publisher: Scribe
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.
Written with quiet dignity that builds to a climax of tragic force, this book about the dissolution of an African tribe, its traditions, and values, represents a welcome departure from the familiar "Me, white brother" genre.
Written by a Nigerian African trained in missionary schools, this novel tells quietly the story of a brave man, Okonkwo, whose life has absolute validity in terms of his culture, and who exercises his prerogative as a warrior, father, and husband with unflinching single mindedness. But into the complex Nigerian village filters the teachings of strangers, teachings so alien to the tribe, that resistance is impossible. One must distinguish a force to be able to oppose it, and to most, the talk of Christian salvation is no more than the babbling of incoherent children. Still, with his guns and persistence, the white man, amoeba-like, gradually absorbs the native culture and in despair, Okonkwo, unable to withstand the corrosion of what he, alone, understands to be the life force of his people, hangs himself. In the formlessness of the dying culture, it is the missionary who takes note of the event, reminding himself to give Okonkwo's gesture a line or two in his work, The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger.
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.Pub Date: Jan. 23, 1958
ISBN: 0385474547
Page Count: 207
Publisher: McDowell, Obolensky
Review Posted Online: April 23, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1958
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A sugarcoated take on midcentury suburbia.
A lively and unabashedly sentimental novel examines the impact of feminism on four upper-middle-class white women in a suburb of Washington, D.C., in 1963.
Transplanted Ohioan Margaret Ryan—married to an accountant, raising three young children, and decidedly at loose ends—decides to recruit a few other housewives to form a book club. She’s thinking A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, but a new friend, artistic Charlotte Gustafson, suggests Betty Friedan’s brand-new The Feminine Mystique. They’re joined by young Bitsy Cobb, who aspired to be a veterinarian but married one instead, and Vivian Buschetti, a former Army nurse now pregnant with her seventh child. The Bettys, as they christen themselves, decide to meet monthly to read feminist books, and with their encouragement of each other, their lives begin to change: Margaret starts writing a column for a women’s magazine; Viv goes back to work as a nurse; Charlotte and Bitsy face up to problems with demanding and philandering husbands and find new careers of their own. The story takes in real-life figures like the Washington Post’s Katharine Graham and touches on many of the tumultuous political events of 1963. Bostwick treats her characters with generosity and a heavy dose of wish-fulfillment, taking satisfying revenge on the wicked and solving longstanding problems with a few well-placed words, even showing empathy for the more well-meaning of the husbands. As historical fiction, the novel is hampered by its rosy optimism, but its take on the many micro- and macroaggressions experienced by women of the era is sound and eye-opening. Although Friedan might raise an eyebrow at the use her book’s been put to, readers will cheer for Bostwick’s spunky characters.
A sugarcoated take on midcentury suburbia.Pub Date: April 22, 2025
ISBN: 9781400344741
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Harper Muse
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
