Happy Pub Day // Book Hangover
Title: There Are Rivers In The Sky
Author: Elif Shafak
Publisher: Knopf
Genre: Literary/Historical Fiction
Happy Pub Day to There Are Rivers In The Sky by Elif Shafak! Thank you to @aaknopf and @prhaudio for the #gifted copies. Combining the author’s beautiful prose/storytelling with the narration by Olivia Vinall knocked my socks off!
This is a 3 POV story, including one character that is male, and she nailed it! You’re going to need both copies because the print includes 11 pictures; plus if you’re anything like me, there are so many moments and quotes to tab!
At its core this is a story of the complexities of love and loss.
Love of knowledge. Love of history. Love of stories. Love of the enviroment. Love of family.
It will take you down a rabbit hole of Mesopotamia, the city of Nineveh, King Ashurbanipal, and a poem—Epic of Gilgamesh.
▪️Timelines/Cast of Characters:
▪️In 1840 London, Arthur is born to an alcoholic father and mentally ill mother in a stinky sewer. Thus he becomes, King Arthur of the sewer and slums, who is a brilliant boy with a gifted memory. During an apprenticeship he becomes fixated on a particular book, Nineveh and its Remains.
▪️In 2014 Turkey we meet Narin, a Yazidi girl, with a rare disorder causing her to go deaf. Her grandmother, a water healer, is determined to journey to Iraq and baptize Narin in the Iraqi sacred temple.
▪️In 2018 London we journey with Zaleekah an orphaned girl raised by her uncle going through a divorce. She is a hydrologist living on a houseboat along the Thames.
They are all connected by a single drop of water and the journey to get there is so rewarding. In this sense, this storytelling reminded my a little of The Covenant of Water (minus the medicine).
A lot of times for me in multi POV I tend to like one character or timeline better; but I truly loved all three equally.
This book gave me a huge book hangover and I highly recommend it!
“Water remembers. It is humans who forget.”
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