Told almost entirely by a first person narrator, with a few bits of what other people said to her, the narrator is slowly acclimating to life in the UK. She's a Syrian refugee who writes a column in a London paper (online) as the author 'Voiceless.' As a result of all the trauma and shock she suffered as she fled Syria on foot, by boat, and sometimes hidden with freight in trucks, she has stopped talking. Months in the hospital ensured that it wasn't a physical problem, and everything should be working fine, despite the obvious abuse and neglect suffered en route.

She's a watcher, and she describes so wonderfully everything she sees from her apartment. When her editor asks for more memories and personal stories, she takes us with her through parts of that painful journey. And as she eventually begins lowering the walls and engaging with her community, we get to be there for that too.

When sharing how it truly is for her to be a refugee, and to have traveled so tragically to somewhere she hoped she could feel safe, readers of the column by Voiceless still doubted her truth. It was a sad picture of the lack of tolerance and acceptance the 'others' in society may always face.

This was a great book that gave a potential voice to Voiceless and tried to share the real emotion behind the tough choices and challenges of a refugee trying to relocate and have a new life. I gave this book 4 out of 5 stars and would recommend it to anyone who appreciates learning about someone else's perspective, especially as a refugee.

Thought-provoking. Eye-opening. An intense look at what it means to be an asylum seeker and their associated trauma.

I became a part of the unnamed Syrian refugee narrator’s life and her attempts to connect with her new community. The traumas she encountered along her journey led to her inability to speak (hysterical mutism). Dealing with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, the reader is given flashbacks to her home and family in Aleppo and the atrocities experienced along her route to England. From a distance, she observes the daily activities of her neighbors, giving them names such as “No-Lights-Man” and “The Juicer”. But her voice is heard in the articles she writes for a London news magazine under the pseudonym of The Voiceless. She writes about her neighbors and the life in Aleppo that she left behind. She writes of the injustices they continue to face.

The author touches upon behavior toward immigrants not just in England but behavior we experience here in the US, such as the tendency to blame an entire group of people for an attack. Refugees deserve fair and equal treatment no matter what country they come from. They did not flee their countries because they wanted to; they fled because it was too dangerous to remain there. Yet they are often forced to remain silent when discriminated against. We do not know what horrors and mistreatment they have been through. They remain silent.

The narrator sadly comes to realize that the safety she fled her country for has yet to be found. Fear continues to be a large part of her life. But when attacks are made upon the local mosque and members of her community, she is forced to decide whether she is going to remain in the shadows or step out and do what is right for the community.

I loved the way AlAmmar took the main character from being an anonymous someone distant from her neighbors (and the reader) and gradually allowed us to enter her life as she allowed her neighbors into her life.

My favorite quote from the book:

“It’s not so difficult to know what people want. At the root of it we all want the same things: freedom, happiness, safety. I want to write what I want to write without the fear of a knock at the door and an interrogation room. I want to love who I want to love without the fear of death or corrective rape. I want to wear what I want to wear without the worry that men will see my skirt or the buttons on my shirt as an invitation. That is it. The freedom to live how we want to live.”

I received an advance e-galley from Algonquin Books. All opinions are my own.

Silence is a Sense by Layla AlAmmar is the story of a young woman, mute as a result her traumatizing journey fleeing Syria for the UK. She protects herself by shutting everyone out, and begins writing about the refugee experience for a local magazine under the pseudonym “the Voiceless”. Despite her best protective efforts, she slowly begins to let people in, until she is forced once and for all to decide whether to remain silent when a shocking hate crime rocks the community she is slowly becoming a part of.

Everyone needs to stop what they’re doing and go buy this book immediately! It’s hard to even put into words how beautiful this piece of writing is. To borrow a line from the protagonist, “ To make [you] see it, I would have to find new words, new definitions.” Silence is a Sense is joining the ranks of only two other books in my life that have made me cry, and that’s saying something. Everything about this book is perfection. The writing style perfectly compliments and illustrates her fractured and fragmented mind and the prose itself is breathtaking. The characters are well developed and feel so real to the reader. This truly reads like a piece of non-fiction and I think this is what made it hit me so hard – even though its fiction, you feel it in your heart that this is the true story of many. The author’s representation of the reality of mental health in this story is done with such expert care and authenticity – I was not surprised after researching the author to discover that she has a background in this area. This story raises so many interesting and important questions about the applicability of western approaches to mental health on the experiences of trauma that are outside the scope of that usually experienced by people in western cultures. This story also eloquently tackles the negative stereotypes placed on refugees and the reality of “assimilating” into western culture. I hope that for all who read it, it will serve as a mirror with which to reflect on underlying thought patterns that your or your friends/family may hold and to start a dialogue.

I would recommend this book to absolutely everyone (although as always, please be mindful of trigger warnings - racism, xenophobia, Islamophobia, sexual assault, domestic violence, PTSD, self-harm) as it was truly a thought provoking and impactful read.

Thank you so much to @algonquinbooks for the #gifted copy of this beautiful story.

I've never read a book that does a better job of putting the reader inside the mind of the narrator than Layla AlAmmar's novel Silence Is A Sense.

The unnamed narrator is a 24 year-old Syrian refugee who has resettled in Great Britain. The novel opens with her narrating the sights she sees looking from her apartment into the windows of other tenants in the complex.

There is Juice Man, a very fit man who has a stringent exercise program and entertains several women and a few men in his apartment. There is an elderly man who also lives alone, a family where the father beats the mother, while their teenage daughter sits in her room with headphones on and their teenage son has anger issues, and Tom and his wife Ruth, who keeps tabs on activities in the complex. We see them so clearly through her eyes.

Our narrator doesn't speak, leaving her neighbors to believe her deaf. She doesn't disabuse them of this notion, it makes it easier to avoid any type of relationship with them. She is too fragile.

We learn that she fled the violence and bombings in Syria, losing contact with her family in the process.
She made her way through Europe, through horrific conditions in refugee settlements, and a young woman on her own in this situation suffers physical, sexual and emotional violence that causes unbearable trauma.

The narrator gives us glimpses of her previous life- her parents and siblings, life at university protesting the brutal Syrian regime of Al-Assad, the daily barrage of bombings that killed so many thousands of innocent people.

She writes essays under the name The Voiceless, and her editor pressures her to reveal more of her life fleeing Syria, something she is unable to do as she is "cornered by memories, caged in by recollections". Her pieces become more controversial as she is critical of the people who are marching with their posters, willing to speak up but not actually do anything to help the humans fleeing their homeland.

A violent attack on a Muslim forces the people in the neighborhood to face up to the racism and religious intolerance amongst them. The Imam of the mosque said of it:
"No god you believe in will be okay with this. You must do unto others as you want them to do to you. That is it. That is all of it. There is nothing else which matters. That is what all the great religions of the world tell us."
That resonated so much with me.

I can tell how much I get from a book by how many highlights I make. Silence Is A Sense is covered with highlights, with insights into the plight of refugees, how memories can be deceiving, how dangerous it is for us to blame "the other" because we don't want to face up to our fears that the world is changing, and how "we all want the same things- freedom, happiness, safety".

The writing is deeply affecting, and looking at the world through our narrator's eyes is enlightening. I will be thinking about her and Silence Is A Sense for a long time to come. I give it my highest recommendation.

Thanks to Algonquin Books for putting me on Layla AlAmmar's book tour.

Stunningly gorgeous writing, Layla AlAmmar brings to life a culture I’m unfamiliar with.
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There is something to be said about a picture of the outside world from the inside of your house. “The voiceless” woman spends her days staring out the window seeing everything. She knows every detail of her neighborhood and pays attention to the people on the streets. She takes what she learns staring out the window and puts words to a column called “the Voiceless”. She has taken to not speaking after her experience leaving war-torn Syria and arriving in a British City.
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I cannot even begin to imagine the horrors she faced in this journey. She tries to write about her refugee experience but does so in a way that does not reveal her identity.
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Slowly she begins taking baby steps into the community. She finds herself slowly becoming part of the neighborhood not just watching the neighborhood. When an anti-Muslim attack occurs she needs to decide if she is going to sit on the sidelines or become a member with a voice in this community.
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Especially, after a year of pandemic we can see the importance of human connection. It is easy to sit behind a window and watch what is going on but it takes real bravery to put yourself out there. The scene at the end of human connection involving a coat just shows the smallest hint of human interaction is what we need.
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This is a heavy book but a beautiful book.
Thank you #NetGalley and #Algonquin book for an arc in exchange for an honest review.

I read this book for the Algonquin blog tour, so thank you so much to the team at Algonquin, and the author for letting me take part and for providing me with a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

Silence is a Sense by Layla AlAmmar is a poignant adult fiction novel in which our main character is mute because of what she has gone through while living in Syria and fleeing the war across Europe and to England where she now lives.

I really love how this book was set up. It flips back and forth between present-day in England where the MC lives, the things she does, the people she watches from her flat and the events around her; and going back to when she lived in Syria, a few years ago and at first happy memories of family life, university and her boyfriend. This second narrative slowly bleeds into recollections of the start of the war, the resistance, things that were done to people she knew and what she had to go through to get out alive. If you are squeamish, don’t like reading about violence, war, abuse, and other triggering topics, then I would steer clear of this book because it has some very vivid and graphic descriptions of all things I mentioned in the trigger warning section below.

The prose is one that I would not read usually. This is a contemporary novel, which again is not something I often read, but I didn’t need setting or plot in this book because the narrator’s voice is so strong despite being mute that I was instantly hooked. The writing style is poignant, raw, beautiful, shocking, tragic and so many more things that I can’t possibly put into words. If you like literary fiction, any fiction, any nonfiction, I urge you to pick up this book because it is a beautiful rendering of an impossible and terrifying situation.

I gave this book 5 stars and I absolutely loved it. This sounds weird because this is a book that recounts horrific events, trauma, torture, rape, displacement, mutism, and so many other tough and hard-hitting topics, so it is weird to say “I loved it” but I did and I don’t know how to phrase it otherwise. I didn’t “love” the events, but the book itself was fantastic and I highly, highly recommend it. If you love poignant stories about current events, real and multi-faceted characters, a simple day-to-day plot and a raw narrative voice, this is the book for you.

Trigger Warnings: mutism, war, trauma, rape, torture, death, murder, choking, sex scenes, graphic violence, graphic narrative of trauma, hospital environments and medical treatments, war zones, losing loved ones, religion, racism, immigration, vivid depictions of domestic abuse, self-harm.

"The Voiceless" is a refuge from Syria who writes anonymously for an online magazine. Her editor Josie pushes for more stories and memories, but does Josie really want to read the truth? And how will the readers respond?
As Voiceless watches her neighbors from her apartment window, visits the local market and walks past the mosque, she feels safe. She also holds onto isolation as a way to protect herself and manage trauma and anxiety. But her neighbors gradually begin to push their way into her life. How will Voicless respond to the increase in demand for her time, space, thoughts, and voice?
I appreciated the insights into the refuge experience and one person's life after rescue. The story is heartbreaking.
I also like the reminder that we too often say "others" and "us/them" as a way to remain separate and disconnected. Unity, cooperation, friendship, and relationships require "WE!"
I did not appreciate the F words or sexual content, which is why I gave the book only 2 stars instead of 3.

The narrator is a young Syrian woman living in an unnamed English city. Traumatized by her journey across Europe from war-torn Syria, she has been diagnosed with psychogenic mutism. She isolates herself from the outside world; she admits, “I can go months without contact.” She spends her time watching the residents of the apartment towers near hers. She does write articles for a magazine in which she describes the refugee experience, but she is known only by a pseudonym “The Voiceless”. Though she thinks “I was supposed to be safe here,” anti-Muslim sentiments appear in her neighbourhood and she has to decide whether to remain passive and voiceless or become an active participant in her community.

This can best be described as a fragmented narrative. We learn about the young woman’s daily life and her thoughts and feelings but we also read parts of her articles; in addition, her memories and nightmares serve as flashbacks to her past in Syria and her travels as a refugee. These flashbacks are not in chronological order but move back and forth through time. The narrator understands that people “try to construct narratives . . . [into] a structure that makes sense . . . trying to stitch it all together into a coherent pattern – a beginning, a middle and an end,” but she cannot mold her memories “into something easy to digest . . . [because] The structure of narrative has collapsed; imprecise in my own mind, with jagged pieces it takes so much to screw together.” The fragmented narrative, therefore, is appropriate.

This fragmentation, however, challenges the reader to piece together the different components of the story to make sense of it. Personally, I had difficulty with three chapters, all entitled “The Eye.” I understand that the Syrian government had sophisticated surveillance systems which were used against its citizens: “There are eyes everywhere.” The actions described in the chapters, however, are not clearly explained. Are they just symbolic nightmares?

Much is not fully explained. Exactly what trauma the narrator endured is not described in great detail but sufficient information is given that the reader can infer what happened to her and people she loved: “friends shot on their way to work . . . babies going to school and bombs falling from the sky . . . Desperate voices in dark basements. Confined spaces. Ahmed, tiny hands bound, eyes and mouth taped shut, a bullet in the head. . . . Cold, hungry, always thirsty.” Of the trip to England she writes: “the hot and overcrowded bus through Turkey and the camps in Greece and the little toe that became so infected I thought it would fall off like a rotten piece of fruit. I wrote about guns to my head in front of the open backs of freezing trucks and that afternoon when we swallowed tear gas and dodged rubber bullets on the Macedonian border.” For me, the most chilling is her mentioning that “between my legs . . . I can no longer distinguish pain from pleasure” and waking up “in dark, cold town squares in Germany or by railway tracks in Austria . . . sore with a taste like sewage in my mouth and a few euros in my pocket or stuffed down my shirt.” More description would be overwhelming.

Considering what she has experienced, it is not surprising that the narrator has retreated from the world and has difficulty coping. She wonders “if there was anywhere in the world that I belonged.” She describes herself as “cornered by memories, caged in by recollections. I feel persecuted by the things I remember and by what my mind chooses to hide from me.” She doubts that “there could possibly be anyone in the world I can rely on.” She feels danger is everywhere: “We are not safe anywhere. Not really. From the moment you’re born, the moment they slap your bottom and you draw breath, the vigil begins. Whether it’s bombs . . . or bullets . . . or a man telling you to just relax and it won’t be that bad, there is peril everywhere. Peril for men. Peril for women. For children and fighters and lovers. Peril everywhere, for everyone.” It is not difficult to understand why she believes, “’There is only fear . . . There’s nothing else in life.’” A medical report about the narrator when she first arrived in England is telling; it mentions her lack of trust, imagining everyone has malicious intent. The final sentence of that report is chilling: “Physical examination and medical history indicate that this is not an entirely irrational response.”

Clearly, the reader cannot be a passive reader. And that ties in with the message that people must not remain passive but be like one man who befriends the refugee: “’No one is truly voiceless, he whispered, either they silence you, or you silence yourself.’” The narrator is amazed at this man’s actions: “Who is this man, defending people he has no personal connection to, defending them simply because it is the right thing to do?”

The one thing that bothered me is that the narrator seems to make little effort to find her family. She wonders if her family arrived in Alexandria as planned: “Did they all make it? Do they know I think of them even though I don’t want to? Do they think of me?” Because she hides behind an alias, she doesn’t think family members could recognize her and find her through her articles. Yet in the same breath, she acknowledges that “you’d be surprised where you can get a wifi signal” so why doesn’t she use the internet to try and contact family members like “cousin Mahmoud in Belfast” and try to find her parents? She knows that her sister Nada arrived safely in Alexandria even before she left Syria, but she was given no contact information for Nada?

This book is an intense read, but one that should be read. The book will stay with the reader long after it’s finished.

Note: I received an eARC from the publisher via NetGalley.

Refugee stories are so critical right now (especially in the US). It’s so important for people to understand what drives refugees from their homelands so that we may better understand immigrants and how unfairly we treat them. “Silence Is a Sense” is told from the perspective of a young woman who has fled to the UK from Syria. She’s also a writer who describes her experiences in a magazine under the pseudonym, The Voiceless. The novel follows her as she becomes enmeshed in the lives of her neighbors and as she tries to create a new life for herself after living through extreme trauma. Her story feels valuable and educational.

AlAmmar is a beautiful writer – her prose is haunting and honest and it’s easy to get wrapped up in her character descriptions. However, I felt myself feeling confused a lot during the reading of this novel. Current events are told while sprinkled with flashbacks to Syria, mixed in with dreams. This back and forth left me unable to connect as much to the horrors of her experience (especially when crucial present-day events are told after the fact). I wanted to immerse myself in the story but trying to figure out who different characters were (it was hard to tell them apart for me) and in what time period they were being described left me feeling frustrated. Other readers who desire plot won’t find it in this novel. It’s definitely more of a character study and a look at the refugee experience versus a novel with clear-cut events.

I’m interested to see what the other reviews would be for this book since the difficulties I had with it might just be personal preference. I do think that AlAmmar’s unique voice is necessary in the publishing world and I’m glad she’s able to share her work.

Thank you Algonquin Books and NetGalley for the eARC in exchange for an honest review.

Forgive me if this review doesn't seem to give Silence is a Sense justice, but I'm finding it difficult to find words for how much I love this book. Silence is a Sense is remarkable. Both lyrical and brutal, I found myself being pulled into the story at every turn. I don't know if I can even think of the last time I read a book that gave me such a sense of place and emotion.

Be aware that it does cover hard topics and comes with some content warnings as the narrator, whom we are introduced to as a Syrian refugee writing under the pseudonym, 'The Voiceless', shares both non-fiction and fictional depictions on her life in Syria and her journey to England from war-torn Syria. As she watches her neighbors from her windows while having little to no communication with them as she has chosen to be mute, several events concerning her neighbors and her neighborhood lead her to finally find her voice again.

The fact that Layla AlAmmar packed so much into under 300 pages is astounding. This book - and Layla AlAmmar - deserve the world and I hope it is nominated for awards. I'll be reading her other works soon because I have a feeling she'll now be one of my favorite authors.

This is a thought provoking novel about a young woman so traumatized by her experience that she is mute, with her only outlet being her writing published under the pseudonym the Voiceless. Her life in Syria and her emigration is revealed slowly over the course of the novel but at its start she is spending her time staring out her window at her neighbors. She thought of the UK as safe but comes to realize that no place is truly safe. She doesn't report a crime, things snowball, and there's a crisis. Her inner monologue and the events she copes with touch on prejudice, emigration, extremism, racism and other critical issues. Thanks to the publisher for the ARC. While this is tough to read in spots, it's also beautifully written. For fans of literary fiction.

An introspective and informative piece that will affect you in ways that you didn’t think were possible while reading a book. I find that I learn about what’s going on around the world best when I read it in the pages of a novel. Even if it’s fiction, I can still get a personal sense of what’s going on, and then I’m inspired to read more into the truth and history. This is the type of book that makes me want to delve more into what was happening on the ground, not from my vantage point of viewing media coverage.

What first drew me in was the immediate observations and people watching done by the main character of her surrounding neighbors. This type of voyeurism is always fascinating and thrilling even if it’s borderline creepy or invasive, but her careful and constant monitoring of the other tenants in and around her building are often the catalysts in this story. Different characters from around the world are all residing in these apartment buildings and it is intriguing to watch their different lives play out.

However, watching the main character grow and develop, sort through trauma and pain, adapt and overcome, is the main attraction. Stretching herself slowly and steadily testing the boundaries of what she finds safe and comfortable is what drives this story forward to its almost conclusion, because it never really ends, even when the last page is turned. Instead, you are offered a glimpse of hope into a future where she continues to heal and cope and live despite her past struggles, whilst never forgetting her true roots and heritage.

Reading this was an absolute privilege and I am thankful to Algonquin for granting me an advanced copy.

One of the most profound statements in Layla AlAmmar’s second novel is “the thing is, when you can’t speak, people assume you can’t hear either.” Told in first person, a young mute woman has left her family and war-torn Aleppo, Syria to become one of the many refugees looking for a safe place to live. Ending up in an unnamed British city, she is living alone and writing The Voiceless column for an e-magazine. We never learn whether her mutism is by choice or because of the physical and mental hardships she’s had to overcome to get to Britain. Her world is small. She lives in “West Tower, fourth floor, flat three.” Much of her life is spent watching her neighbors. In bits and pieces, the reader comes to know the narrator as an educated woman, studying literature at a Damascus university only to flee in order to live. We learn the cost of having to leave her family, the sexual and physical abuse she suffered as an asylum seeker and what it is like to be one of the voiceless refugees living in a place where even surrounded by people, you live in solitude with your own thoughts.

This book is incredibly difficult to review! There were some aspects that I absolutely loved and some aspects that I had major problems with. The quick, short writing style drew me in immediately and made it an immersive read. A young woman sits silently in her apartment in England, watching the intimate lives of her neighbors, while unable to speak. Instead, she chooses to anonymously recount the traumas of her experiences back home in Syria and over the course of her flight across Europe in written articles signed "the Voiceless." I loved how these articles and memories were interspersed with the narrative. Her "voice" is incredibly powerful as she takes public political stances even while facing the microaggressions of her editor who doesn't believe the things that happened to her. Despite the incredibly heavy-handedness of the metaphor of her being *literally* voiceless, I did enjoy this aspect. The trouble came for me in two buckets: the first was how, even as she faces extremely overt and violent racism and Islamophobia in her community and writes powerful anti-racist articles, her own attitudes are extremely racist, particularly towards her Jewish and Asian neighbors.

The second and most significant obstacle for me was how her entire character's arc revolved around a white savior character. When we are first introduced to Adam, he is a well-meaning white dude who romanticizes the 1960s and doesn't have a clue what is actually going on in the world. Her first impression of him - which we read in her thoughts - is spot on. I thought, ok, wow, this book is going to have a powerful message about the white savior complex! Can't wait! But then suddenly she is really into him romantically and in the end he actually IS the white savior who gets her to overcome her trauma and speak again by seeing the righteousness of his completely bland and ineffectual protest organization (literally a bunch of white people marching for.... peace?)

Ultimately, the best parts of this book speak to the power of literature, language, and human connection, but ultimately it falls really flat. So much potential, but I was disappointed.

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC of this book. The writing was so beautiful, even when examining the horrific realities of the life of a Syrian refugee trying to recover from her trauma in a small British town. It would be impossible to read this book and not gain a deeper empathetic understanding of the refugee experience, and of being a non-white person in a country with a growing white nationalist movement. A very important book, and so well done.https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3855230892

A novel that causes one to consider, to think, about the feelings of the refugee who is a human llike you.
The protagonist is mute because of her experiences in escaping from Syria to England. Could you do this and not be affected? She is an observer. She writes articles under the name of 'Voiceless'. Some areas she touches on are religion, politics, conditions. She also thinks about her neighbors in the apartments around her that she is able to watch from her balcony. She is a watcher now.
Read this thought provoking novel.

I'm not even sure how to review this book. It was devastating and heartbreaking.  It makes you think and pushes you out of your comfort zones. And needs someone much more eloquent than myself to do it justice.

It is a story of a Syrian refugee who is seeking asylum in the U.K. she has faced so much trauma that she no longer speaks. She spends her days watching her neighbors out of her windows. You slowly learn some of the trauma she had to endure not only in Syria but also during her trip to seek asylum and also once she got to the U.K.

She went to the U.K because she thought she would be safe there but she is slowly realizing the hate that there is for Muslim refugees in the country. 

She writes stories for a publication speaking about what it is like being a refugee and ways that the country can do better handling refugees.

This book is an exploration of hate, bigotry, trauma, pain, ptsd, war, refugees, nationalism, and so much more.

This book reminds me alot of The Affairs of The Falcons and What We Lose.

CW: detailed War, Death, self-cutting, hate crimes, death of children.

"I don't know how to explain to her that I am cornered by memories, caged in my recollection. I feel persecuted by the things I remember and by what my mind chooses to hide from me.~from Silence is a Sense by Layla AlAmmar

Everyone wants a story. A narrative with meaning. The doctors. The officials. The contact at a magazine who publishes her writing.

She is recognized as 'other', Arab, Muslim. She is a refugee in England. People fear her. Or, they want to know things she holds close, the people lost and the atrocities of war and her escape across Europe. The experiences that left her enveloped by silence.

Trauma took her voice. Communicating only in the written word, she becomes "The Voiceless."
The only reasonable response was to fill myself up with silence.~from Silence is a Sense by Layla AlAmmar
She looks out the windows of her apartment and observes the occupants of the other apartments. She knows their secrets. But she keeps apart until a horrendous crime evokes a response that frees her.

Layla AlAmmar's novel Silence is a Sense brilliantly delves into the soul of a woman who has lost everything, first by the war that destroyed her world, and then by her harrowing flight across borders, only to find there is no safe harbor even in freedom.

Edgar Allan Poe's fable Silence informs the work, the narrator committing it to memory. "My heart pounds to the rhythm of his cadence," she thinks as she recites it in her head.

I picked up my grandfather's set of Poe to read the fable and noted images that appear in AlAmmar's novel. Poe describes a place where giant water lilies shriek in a yellow river, and forests quake in windless skies, and a crimson moon lights the view. A being in desolation is subjected to beating rain and roaring hippopotami, then by a profound silence by the Demon who tells the tale. The man hurriedly flees in terror.

The fable speaks to the narrator who has also been terrorized and left in silence.

For AlAmmar's protagonist, silence is the only sane reaction to atrocity. We don't need detailed descriptions of what she endured, for her reaction tells us all we need to know.

What do we see when we look at refugees, immigrants, people who look different from us, or who worship differently from us? Do we think of their legacy of losses?

Our immigrant ancestors kept their stories quiet, they did not tell us of the death camps or the burned villages, the rape and torture when they were powerless. We wrap these things in silence.

We demand stories and hope to hear pretty tales, happy endings.

At the end of the novel, our heroine speaks her name, has found her voice. There is hope of healing.

I received a free ARC from the publisher in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

This book grabbed my attention from the beginning. Lyrical, brutally honest and an unwavering glipmse into the trauma of fleeing a war-torn country. The reader enters the main character's journey and liberation through her intimate writings. Timely and important, reader's will find they are thinking about this story long after it's over.

The Voiceless, as she dubs herself, is a young Syrian refugee woman who has come to the UK for safety, but finds racial injustices and danger even in the nicest of neighborhoods. She is mute by emotional trauma and tries to express herself through anonymous writing to a local magazine/paper, but when she becomes witness to a crime and does not to go to the police, a domino effect falls into place leading to a local store keeper murdered.
This novel goes between current times, her experiences in Syria, and her pieces of writing. The only unfortunate twist, is that you don't always know which one of those you are reading about until you have to go back and re-read a bit. This is a pre-publication novel, so hopefully the final draft will perhaps have a font change, or a visual signal.
Thank you Algonquin Books and NetGalley for the opportunity to read this arc. No doubt, this book will be a success when it hits the shelves!