What lies between us
Ratings2
Average rating1.5
15
Ratings2
Average rating1.5
"In the idyllic hill country of Sri Lanka, a young girl grows up with her loving family; but even in the midst of this paradise, terror lurks in the shadows. When tragedy strikes, she and her mother must seek safety by immigrating to America. There the girl reinvents herself as an American teenager to survive, with the help of her cousin; but even as she assimilates and thrives, the secrets and scars of her past follow her into adulthood. In this new country of freedom, everything she has built begins to crumble around her, and her hold on reality becomes more and more tenuous. When the past and the present collide, she sees only one terrible choice.From Nayomi Munaweera, the award-winning author of Island of a Thousand Mirrors, comes the confession of a woman, driven by the demons of her past to commit a single and possibly unforgivable crime.Praise for Island of a Thousand Mirrors:"The paradisiacal landscapes of Sri Lanka are as astonishing as the barbarity of its revolution, and Munaweera evokes the power of both in a lyrical debut novel worthy of shelving alongside her countryman Michael Ondaatje or her fellow writer of the multigenerational immigrant experience Jhumpa Lahiri." - Publishers Weekly"The beating heart of Island of a Thousand Mirrors is not so much its human characters but Sri Lanka itself and the vivid, occasionally incandescent, language used to describe this teardrop in the Indian Ocean." - The New York Times Book Review"--
"In the idyllic hill country of Sri Lanka, a young girl grows up with her loving family; but even in the midst of this paradise, terror lurks in the shadows. When tragedy strikes, she and her mother must seek safety by immigrating to America. There the girl reinvents herself as an American teenager to survive, with the help of her cousin; but even as she assimilates and thrives, the secrets and scars of her past follow her into adulthood. In this new country of freedom, everything she has built begins to crumble around her, and her hold on reality becomes more and more tenuous. When the past and the present collide, she sees only one terrible choice. From Nayomi Munaweera, the award-winning author of Island of a Thousand Mirrors, comes the confession of a woman, driven by the demons of her past to commit a single and possibly unforgivable crime"--
Reviews with the most likes.
Can't wait to delicately shred this to pieces at my company book club on Tuesday! This became a hate-read with a skim-finish about 3/4 of the way through, but it was terrible the whole time. It's melodramatic, very dark, and sensual in strange and unsettling ways. The plot twist didn't make any sense and turns happened way too quickly. None of the characters are at all likable. It reads distant and nightmarish for a book that isn't a thriller (at least, I don't think it is?). In the end, this is a story that spends a lot of time complaining about the plight of women in patriarchal societies while playing into every dumb trope of female hysteria. Just awful.
The publisher provided me with the opportunity to read this in exchange for providing feedback. (via NetGalley)
2.5 stars.The author writes well but I had a hard time with the first half of this book. I couldn't really get into it. It picked up for me in the second half but this story just didn't do it for me.
