Title: Elsewhere, home
Author: Leila Aboulela
Format: Ebook
Publisher: Blackcat
Page count: 224
Release day: February 2nd 2019
Series: Standalone
Rating: 3 stars
*Thanks to NetGalley for providing this arc!*
What is it about? (Summary from GoodReads)
From one of our
finest contemporary writers whose work has been praised by J.M. Coetzee, Ali
Smith and Aminatta Forna, Leila Aboulela’s Elsewhere, Home offers
us a rich tableau of life as an immigrant abroad, attempting to navigate the
conflicts of assimilation and difference in an unfamiliar world.
A young woman’s encounter with a former
classmate elicits painful reminders of her former life in Khartoum. A wealthy
Sudanese student in Aberdeen begins an unlikely friendship with a Scottish man.
A woman experiences an evolving relationship to her favourite writer, whose
portrait of their shared culture both reflects and conflicts with her own sense
of identity.
Shuttling between the dusty, sun-baked streets
of Khartoum and the university halls and cramped apartments of Aberdeen and
London, Elsewhere, Home explores, with subtlety and restraint,
the profound feelings of yearning, loss and alienation that come with leaving
one’s homeland in pursuit of a different life.
What I thought:
Normally Iām not a big fan of short story collections, since most of the time they feel either too short or pointless.. But I want to try this one out since this book is own voices, the author is born in Egypt!
This is a collection of short stories about life as an immigrant, and finding your own way in a new country. This was really interesting to read, since I have no idea how this is. It was really nice that there were so many (13) stories, all with a different tale to tell. So you get to see a lot of different situations. And you get to learn a lot about the culture.
I did struggle a bit with the length of the stories. Sometimes the stories were a bit short and I would have liked to learn a bit more about certain characters and it felt like they stopped a bit abruptly. While other stories felt a bit too long. And of course there were stories that were exactly the right length š
This is more a personal preference, but I would have liked if the longer stories would have been split up in smaller chapters. I usually lose my focus if chapters are too long, regardless of how much Iām liking the stories.
I would recommend this book if you want the learn more about immigrant, especially Muslim immigrants from Egypt who moved to England/ Schotland.
Come talk to me!
Do you read short stories collections?
This sounds like an interesting concept – I don’t really read short stories though, they don’t usually work for me but I hope you enjoyed this.Lynn š
Iām also not a big short story reader haha, these were fine, but my main problem was that they were to short