Reviews tagging 'Violence'

A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy by Nathan Thrall

9 reviews

isleofwoman's review

emotional informative reflective sad tense medium-paced

4.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Fire/Fire injury, War, Police brutality, Racism, Death, Child death, Violence, and Domestic abuse

paperknotbooks's review

emotional informative reflective sad tense medium-paced

Read for BookTube Prize. To be rated at a later date.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence, Racism, Fire/Fire injury, Toxic relationship, Physical abuse, Grief, Religious bigotry, Emotional abuse, Death, Injury/Injury detail, Car accident, War, Police brutality, Child death, and Domestic abuse

niamh_p_delaney's review

challenging dark emotional informative sad medium-paced

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Religious bigotry, Domestic abuse, Grief, Fire/Fire injury, Racism, Violence, War, Racial slurs, Death, Colonisation, and Car accident

sarah_see_be's review

challenging dark emotional medium-paced

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Car accident, Xenophobia, and Violence

queenoftheharpies's review

challenging dark emotional informative sad tense medium-paced

5.0

Completely devastating. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Colonisation, Death, Genocide, War, Car accident, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Grief, Hate crime, Religious bigotry, Sexual violence, Racism, Islamophobia, Physical abuse, Violence, Police brutality, Child death, and Medical trauma

isalime's review

dark emotional informative reflective sad tense medium-paced

4.0

A bus full of kindergarteners is hit by a semi-truck near Jerusalem. The bus flips and catches fire. It took hours for emergency services to arrive. 

 

The crash serves as a type of epicenter for the book. The book is broken up into 5 sections with different POV and life stories of Palestinians and Israelies who were at the scene of the accident. Through their life stories, you learn about the Israel-Palestine conflict. 

 

“Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy” is a fitting subtitle as by the end you understand why the children were on the bus, why the semi-truck crashed into bus, why the emergency services took hours to arrive, why the accident was inevitable, and why different itirations of this tragedy will continue to happen throughout the region. 

 

I had little to no knowledge about the conflict and day to day life of Palestinians. I felt the book did its best to give me a concise history lesson and social context of the Israel-Palestine conflict. That being said, there were a couple of things I didn’t like. There are a lot of characters and even with the character list at the start of the book, it was hard for me to keep track of who everyone was. While the crash is the epicenter of the book, it takes a backseat as you learn about the life stories of the characters. I wasn’t always interested in the life stories and was dying to get back to the crash and the aftermath. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Fire/Fire injury, Child death, Death, Car accident, Colonisation, and Grief

Moderate: Violence, Emotional abuse, Toxic relationship, Panic attacks/disorders, and Physical abuse

meldasilas's review against another edition

dark sad tense medium-paced

5.0

A heartbreaking picture of living as a Palestinian in the West Bank, this book takes you on a winding journey through a man's life full of sadness, regret, and ambiguity told through the narrative of bus crash that involves a kindergarten class.

As a mom of a kindergartener, this is the most heartbreaking book I read all year, particularly because it goes through the frustratingly difficult history between Palestine and Israel and demonstrates how every small daily element of life a free person takes for granted is not offered in the West Bank.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Fire/Fire injury, Dementia, Drug abuse, Child abuse, Gaslighting, Mental illness, Cancer, Hate crime, Blood, Child death, Domestic abuse, Car accident, Drug use, Medical trauma, Emotional abuse, Physical abuse, Injury/Injury detail, Islamophobia, Medical content, Police brutality, Violence, and War

throwback682's review against another edition

emotional informative medium-paced

5.0

This book covers a lot of people and their stories. It can be hard to keep track and follow who is who. But it’s very worth it. As many have said, this true story reads like a novel. And, it illustrates so powerfully life for Palestinians under Israeli occupation. The very real deaths of human children in this story paint a picture like a metaphor all the ways that settler colonialism harms people. You can easily understand how everything could’ve been different for these families without borders and walls and checkpoints and various classes of IDs and different emergency services. This book taught me a lot without being dry. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Colonisation, Domestic abuse, Injury/Injury detail, Violence, Grief, Confinement, Death, Car accident, War, Genocide, Religious bigotry, Toxic relationship, Child death, Islamophobia, and Fire/Fire injury

pageturner2017's review

challenging dark informative reflective sad medium-paced

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Fire/Fire injury, Colonisation, Child death, War, and Violence

Moderate: Child abuse, Sexual assault, and Sexual violence