The Singularity
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Average rating3.5
In an unnamed coastal city filled with refugees, the mother of a displaced family calls out her daughter’s name as she wanders the cliffside road where the child once worked. The mother searches in vain until, spent from grief, she throws herself into the sea. Bearing witness to the suicide is another woman, there on a business trip; she will soon give birth to a stillborn baby. In the wake of her pain, the second woman remembers other losses—of a language, a country, an identity—when her family fled a distant war. In this powerful and moving novel, Balsam Karam offers a fresh approach to language and narrative as she questions our assumptions and perspectives. Her English-language debut, The Singularity is a compelling exploration of loss, history and memory.
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About the audiobook: The narrator has done an excellent job, particularly during the more complex sections where the protagonist, narrated in the second person point of view, converses with her therapist while reminiscing about leaving her ancestral home and childhood friend simultaneously. I didn't find myself confused, so kudos for that.
Regarding the content: The structure may be a bit confusing at first, but fortunately, the author and translator have managed it well, minimizing any confusion. The author skillfully paints the lives of both women with rich doses of nostalgia. However, there seems to be a lack of critical information about the disappearance of “the missing one,” leaving readers to speculate about the details. Additionally, the portrayal of motherhood struck me as somewhat preachy, depicting it as an all-consuming role without much personal identity beyond being a mother to one's daughter.
P.S. I absolutely loved the symbolism behind the title of this book; it feels very fitting and distinctive.
Overall, I'd give it a rating of 3.75 out of 5 stars, rounding down to 3 stars.
Special thanks to Dreamscape Media and NetGalley for providing the ARC of this audiobook.
This is a gut punch of a novel that vividly explores a mother's grief and how it ripples outward across borders, reverberating across generations. The later chapters flip mid sentence, the present mingling with the past to probe at the compounding, echoing loss. An experimental work driven by the loss of the author's own child, it was almost too heavy to bear the first time.
I read it again, and the mounting body count of grief, the missing daughter trafficked or dead, the children left alone as their mother, unable to find her daughter flings herself off the cliffs, seen by a visiting woman who misscarries but refuses to give birth to the child and the recollections of cousins and best friends killed - it's a lot. Recounted here it seems almost ridiculous, but there is a plodding sameness to the passing of time, of moving forward that makes for a breathless read. This is an incredibly ambitious novel that's now stuck in my head.
