
A Stone in My Hand
Cathryn Clinton
2002, Candlewick Press, 0-7636-1388-6, $15.99 hb
This a tender novel, filled with memorable pain and beauty, told in the fictional voice of 11-year-old Maalek, a Palestinian girl in Gaza City during the 1988–1989 intifada, or uprising. Maalek keeps a pigeon named Abdo on her roof, and to him she returns to voice her thoughts as her life devolves in confusion and loss: Her father is killed (ironically, by a Palestinian bus bomb); her brothers join the intifada, with tragic consequences; and throughout, her mother and sisters help Maalek learn to cope. The characters are fully drawn, and Clinton’s writing is sincere and skillful enough that the ironies of her plot buttress a sense of authenticity. The result is a surprisingly sensitive story with an ending as untidy as life itself.
You may also be interested in...
Noorjahan Bose: A Life of Learning
Taking inspiration from her now-deceased mother, Noorjahan Bose, a daughter of the Agunmukha, Bangladesh, now shifts her energy toward empowering other daughters.The Ebb and Flow of History on the Zambezi River
In tracing the past six centuries of history, historian Malyn Hewitt captures the cyclical rise and fall of the river and its people.Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature Winner Gives Voice to Marginalized
“No one else will be destined to write a life story as squalid as mine, although it’s all true,” comments the elusive protagonist of Algerian author Ahmed Taibaoui’s noir novel.