It’s a cliché but I can’t believe this year is going so quickly. At the start of 2023, I set the intention of removing the high expectations for myself and just having fun. However, I feel like I haven’t had time to practise that as I’ve been bouncing from one thing to another. As we move into Autumn, I finally feel like I can practise what I preach and, certainly, my audiobooks have been helping me get there. I’ve absolutely adored all of the memoirs I’ve listened to on audio recently and they’ve all taught me an important message about perspective. As usual, these mini-reviews have been stacking up for the last few months so comment if you’ve read any of these and if you agree/disagree!
‘The Tidal Year’ by Freya Bromley
THE PLOT: ‘The Tidal Year’ by Freya Bromley is a memoir about grief, love and wild swimming. After losing her teenage brother to cancer, Freya attempted to swim in every tidal pool in Britain in one year. Beginning the trip as angry and unable to process her grief; her romantic, friendship and familial relationships develop over her travels and she meets people and pools with their own incredible stories along the way.
RATING: As someone who likes a spot of wild swimming, I adored this book. I felt like I could picture the rugged British coastline and the rush of entering each tidal pool. Aside from the imagery, Freya’s narrative arc also pulled me in. Writing a memoir is difficult because it’s hard to give structure to your own story but I feel like Freya manages to convey her development via clear plot points while refusing to portray grief as linear. At its heart, I loved the honesty of this book; the anger and injustice of a teenage boy dying too soon, the guilt of dating and living without him, the difficulties of connecting to other family members when you’re all acutely aware of the huge hole shifting your dynamics. Freya’s writing has clever metaphors and sharp specifics which make all of these things feel emotionally true to the reader. In particular, I liked how she included her romantic relationships in the book as it added some levity and reminded me of Dolly Alderton, yet you can see how the way she loves is affected by grief and her dates are a great mirror for her emotional state.
‘I Don’t Want to Talk About Home’ by Suad Aldarra
THE PLOT: ‘I Don’t Want to Talk About Home’ by Suad Aldarra is a memoir about becoming Syrian refugee in Ireland. Growing up in conservative Saudi Arabia, Suad yearned to live in the country of her family’s origin, Syria. So, when the opportunity to study at Damascus University arose, she jumped at the chance to experience freedom away from her strict father. But when war comes after the Arab Spring, Suad finds herself desperately looking for a way out.
RATING: This is an incredible story of love and perseverance. Contrary to the pervading narrative about Syrian refugees, you won’t find tales of climbing into boats or being trapped in Greece, but you will find a unique story of one person’s journey to the West to save their family. The first half of the book focuses on Suad’s upbringing in Saudi Arabia, which surprised but delighted me. It provided vital context to the rest of the book as she was seen as an outsider of Syrian origin, something that is mirrored later in the book, and it educated me about a country that I naively assumed I understood. In particular, her relationships with her authoritarian father, her Syrian-Palestinian husband and Islam overall were very compelling as she navigates leaving a patriarchal society and finding love on her own terms and discovering her own beliefs and values.
‘How to Say Babylon’ by Safiya Sinclair
THE PLOT: ‘How to Say Babylon’ by Safiya Sinclair is a memoir about breaking free from her patriarchal Rastafarian upbringing. Safiya’s father, a volatile reggae musician and militant adherent to a sect of Rastafari, became obsessed with her purity. With the threat of what Rastas call Babylon, the immoral and corrupting influences of the Western world outside their home, he worried that womanhood would make Safiya and her sisters morally weak. The book charts Safiya’s reckoning with patriarchy as she finds her own voice as a poet.
RATING: This is a powerful story of finding oneself in adversity. Although Safiya dearly loves her family, she cannot cope with her father’s oppression and the patriarchal Rastafari strictures. Touching on the legacy of colonialism in Jamaica, class and education, the books’ wide-ranging themes are cleverly woven together to make the reader reflect. I’ve removed half a star because I really struggled with the audiobook narration. Each sentence is read like poetry, with long pauses and a laboured rhythm, which leads to unnatural emphasis on certain words. This is somewhat personal taste, but I prefer when the author delivers the story naturally as if they’re speaking directly to you. I also felt the book was a tad long, with some overwritten descriptions. Again, probably just a taste thing because the author is a poet, but it felt like there was a lot of purple prose and unnecessary extended metaphors.
Amina's Bookshelf 