I think all of these characters were well written and it was interesting to follow along in their lives, minds, and world. It was beautiful written and overall a well rounded narrative

Too Soon touches on so many things; the mass displacement & erasure of Palestinians over the decades, lost love & sexual desires, life as a refugee in America, motherhood & arranged marriages, generational traumas that echo over time. It’s beautifully complex and with such immersive writing I felt like I knew the three women deeply, personally.

We have Arabella, 35 and a theater director in New York who is waiting to make her big break on Broadway. But she has the lingering feeling she’s slowly missing the train to motherhood and wondering if that’s a path she even wants to explore. When an opportunity arises to direct a play in Palestine she feels the tug to return to her family’s homeland. It also helps her grandmother has conspired to set her up with a doctor which might be her answer to that lingering feeling.

Zoya is the matriarch of the family, a woman who pushed the boundaries in school until she was pulled out to work by her father. She’s married off at 15 and rises from her meager farm life to that of socialite - where she still struggles to fit in. Soon enough an attack - commonly referred to now as The 6 Day War - takes the rug out from under her family. After a decade of living with her father, she finally embarks on her journey to American with her 7 daughters and son in tow.

Naya is the youngest of Zoya’s daughters and the one that defies her the most. In her struggles to fit in with her American classmates and overcome language barriers she begins to gravitate to Black Panther meetings and don an Afro. In an effort to “help” her daughter Zoya arranges for Naya to be pulled from school and married off at 15 just as she had been.

I think this novel is an example of why I love reading so much. I could see parts of myself but also see how vastly different their life experiences were from my own. It is a beautiful thing to experience someone else’s life for a bit and to widen your scope of understanding fellow human beings.

This is a beautifully written story. I enjoyed all three narrators’ perspectives. This book does a good job of connecting all three characters through their art and generational trauma.