Customer Reviews

The Cry of the Dove: A Novel

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As a professor of English in a state university and teacher of Middle Eastern Women Writers I am always looking for novels that will challenge my students. I have used Faqir's second novel Pillars of Salt on several occasions. I was eager to assign The Cry of the Dove this semester. I had never read it before and I read it along with my students. Our first reaction to Salma's inability to forgive herself and to "get over it" was based on the idea that she wasn't trying hard enough to settle into her new life in Exeter. However, after completing the novel my students and I came to understand the difficulty she had in adjusting to the country that was now to be her home. Her landlady lives a parallel life, the shop keeper across the road lives as an outsider, her Welsh friend lives with a sense of distrust for the English. How, we concluded, could we expect Salma to behave much differently than she did. Her early sexual experiences were brutal and abusive, her pregnancy blamed entirely on her, her protective custody, flight to the convent and eventually England did nothing to encourage her to forgive herself for her moment of adolescent indescretion. My students and I predicted the conclusion but wanted to avoid reading it. We knew what would happen.

This novel continues Faqir's theme of womens' lack of power in the face of the male establishment, specifically, male relatives. The author clearly follows the themes of immigration, empowerment, personal power and cultural tradition. Pillars of Salt is, I believe, more powerfully and skillfully written. But The Cry of the Dove tackles the harsh realities of a woman who cannot escape her past and the damage it has done to her.

Having a passion for all things Middle Eastern and reading everything I can get my hands on, I did find this interesting - but it was not particularly pleasant reading. It was sometimes very hard to follow the memory sequences interspersed with the current life sequences (although the challenge was a little menatally apealling). Many characters weren't developed fully, or rather they were vague in a way that was possibly intended, but also left me a bit wanting. The culture of the main character was also very vague. After doing a search on "The Levant" I am still no clearer as to where this character was from...if it is a real location the author had in mind, or rather a general cultural ideal. In any case, I don't believe I have ever read a book that so impressively tied together the past and the present - from a writing stand point, It was quite pleasurable to see what the author was capable of doing. The ending came a bit quick and failed to win my compassion, due to the fact that the character essentially chose her own fate at the expense of all those that had worked so hard to free her. Perhaps that was the point, but it didn't totally work for me. If you are fascinated by the mental workings of immigrants I highly recommend this - if you are wanting a clear picture of Middle Eastern/Muslim culture, I would recommend many books over this one.

I was seduced into reading this book by the lovely cover picture of a blue mosque by a reflecting pool. The actual locales, however, are far from such splendor. The protagonist, Salma, comes from a Bedouin tribe that punishes premarital sex with death. Fearful of her life, she escapes to police custody and is imprisoned in a sordid jail for her own protection. Rescued by nuns after several years, she finds asylum in England, living near the tracks in Exeter while she scrapes a living in low-level immigrant jobs and tries to improve her English.

All this is conveyed in outline in the first few chapters of the book, whose short sections read like picking through a pile of picture postcards spanning twenty years and two continents. Many of the descriptions are moving and effective, lyrical and stark by turns, and the jumping around in time should be familiar to all but the most literal readers. The real problem of the book is the lack of a consistent voice for Salma herself. Partly, this is a matter of language. We see Salma struggling to learn her first words of English; we see her later with enough knowledge to take an Open University course in literature; but the book is very vague about what happens to her in the middle. The flowing language of the first-person narrative clashes with the elementary mistakes that Salma makes in speaking, giving us little sense of her painful progress from one tongue to another.

In terms of factual description, though, the account of Salma's years in Exeter working as a seamstress and barmaid does have a certain grim realism, but it is rather stagnant. By contrast, Salma's memories of her early life begin to seem too impossibly idyllic, and she takes to romanticizing her future in a series of make-believe letters to various unreachable recipients, inventing a wish-fulfillment version of her life. The things that presumably really do happen in the last few chapters are scarcely more believable, unprepared and coming out of nowhere. And the very end of the book is like a slap in the face of the reader.

This is one of a number of recent novels dealing with the situation of Islamic immigrant women in Britain and the irresistible pull of the home country; some are even listed among the suggestions for further reading at the back of the book. In my personal order of preference, I would cite THE TRANSLATOR by Leila Aboulela, SWEETNESS IN THE BELLY by Camilla Gibb, THE SAFFRON KITCHEN by Yasmin Crowther, and BRICK LANE by Monica Ali. Despite its many incidental pleasures, I am not convinced that THE CRY OF THE DOVE adds enough to works like these to make it worth buying.

I found this an incredibly engaging and emotionally moving account of a young Arab woman trapped between the incredibly mysogynist Middle East and the incredibly racist culture of London. The author very realistically portrays the mental state of a woman who has undergone the trauma of being imprisoned to protect her from an honor killing, as well as a disfiguring skin condition and being violently uprooted from her close knit traditional community. The main character drifts dreamily in and out of a vividly remembered past and supportive and exploitive relationships - as well as dissociative states where she is supersensitive to smells and believes she hears the daughter she gave up calling her in distress. She doesn't plan for the future and doesn't problem solve or make decisions. Rather she floats along wherever circumstances take her. Her inability to become rooted in her new life in London make the surprise ended totally believable.

I found the descriptions of nomadic life among the Bedouins riveting. Likewise the descriptive detail regarding the lower middle class neighborhoods Salma frequents in London rivals that of Henry Miller or George Orwell.

A very competent writer and a great read.

by Dr Stuart Jeanne Bramhall, author of THE MOST REVOLUTIONARY ACT: MEMOIR OF AN AMERICAN REFUGEE.

The story itself was intriguing, heartbreaking and very well written. But omigosh, sometimes you just wanted to slap the main character and tell her to get over it. BUT I understand that the main theme of the book is her struggle between her present and past, which is something that isn't easy to overcome for anyone.

What I disliked most was the style of writing used in the book. It was so confusing to try and follow all the back and forth thoughts between what she was experiencing in the present vs. a flashback from the past. One paragraph she would be sitting in a bar talking to someone and the next paragraph would start out with, "Hills, far, far away, soft fluffy clouds, his hair and oranges..." I'm thinking, what the mess is she talking about?

It's hard to get a hang of and I didn't really get used to the style until well past half way through the book. Once you're used to it, then it's easier to read. It's definitely not a feel good book, like another reviewer mentioned. It's a downer for sure, haha

The Cry of the Dove is a compelling story of a woman forsaken by her family and running for her life. Salma must flee her country to escape being murdered due to her sexual exploits with a boy from her village. She seeks refuge in jail where she remains for years. Her child is immediately taken away from her at birth and her life is a series of disappointments and confusion. Eventually, she emigrates to England but never feels safe or comfortable. Her very physical appearance constantly reminds her of her inferiority in her new country. The loss of her daughter has eliminated any hope for happiness. Even when she finds happiness, it is not enough. Her return to her country is a form of suicide but one that she cannot resist. Her daughter cries for her and she must answer. I found the book very powerful and sad. I think the author did a fine job of capturing the plight of many women who are in Salma's position. I agree that the switching from past to present was confusing at times but reflected her own confusion between her past life and her current existence.

Sentence by sentence, this book was quite well written. But the interspersing of paragraph-sized bits from various time periods was sometimes confusing, increasingly tiresome, and frustrating to those of us who enjoy forward plot movement. At the rare moments when it seemed that something interesting was about to happen, we would be immediately shunted back to a more mundane time frame. The tone of the entire book is downbeat to the point of monotony. I liked and sympathized with the protagonist, which makes it more painful that almost nothing good ever happens to this woman. Unfortunately, the ending does not provide the relief we all deserve.

This book definitely gave a grim picture of an Arab woman's life, but it was often fragmented and sometimes difficult to read. This book's title character was haunted by the loss of her child and seemed to never be able to "cleanse" herself of anything--not her past, not her foreign-ness in a new country--and ultimately couldn't forgive herself for it. The ending was somewhat predictable and I think there are other books dealing with similar topics that are better written and more passionate. Overall, it's just not a book that's up there in my top 50.