My Friends

★★★★★★★★★☆ 9/10

400 pages

What’s it about?

It is 1984 and Khaled is eighteen when he leaves Benghazi to study English Literature abroad. On a whim, he and his friend stop at a demonstration outside the Libyan embassy in London.  When shots are suddenly fired from inside the embassy, Khaled is wounded, and his whole life changes.

What did it make me think about?

Friendship, trauma, and exile.

Should I read it?

This is a beautifully written book.  A whole review could be written about the author's prowess.  And not only is it beautifully written, but the story gives you so much to think about.  I had no idea that there had been a shooting in 1984 outside the Libyan embassy in London.  What a starting point from which to write a fictional story.  The story made me think about friendship and how fortunate we are to have those friends in our lives that we can rely on. " 'Friend.  What a word.  Most use it about those they hardly know.  When it is a wondrous thing.' " This novel also made me feel how difficult it would be to live in exile from all you know as home. It is so easy to talk about immigration and forget we are often talking about people who cannot go back. "It turns out it is possible to live without one's family.  All one has to do is endure each day and gradually, minute by minute, brick by brick, time builds a wall."  As much as I appreciated this novel, I would be doing you a disservice if I did not say it is a slower-paced book. If you are looking for a plot to propel you through, this is not the book for you.  It is contemplative, thought-provoking, and beautifully written, but not a page-turner.

A passage I marked

"I realized then that I had always somehow anticipated this, perhaps even from as far back as when I was fourteen and first heard his story read on the radio, that he would be a medium, that we ask of writers what we ask of our closest friends: to help us mediate and interpret the world."