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Sarah's Reviews > The Sirens of Baghdad
The Sirens of Baghdad
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by
DNF at 48% The one star reflects the fact that I'm not finishing this because the author is making extremely heavy-handed attempts to manipulate the reader's emotions.
The book is about an Iraqi citizen and his perspective of the American invasion of Iraq. I won't argue that some awful things must have happened because of that invasion but the writer is using things like a mentally ill child being shot down at a check point and a missile falling on a wedding party to show that terrible things happened. The problem that I have is that these are the kinds of things that nobody can look at and say that it isn't tragic. What about the innocents that were killed that weren't so lily white? The author is slapping you into agreeing with him instead of slowly drawing you in with good writing and seducing you into agreeing and seeing that POV.
Clumsy, manipulative writing that caused me to DNF - 1 star.
The book is about an Iraqi citizen and his perspective of the American invasion of Iraq. I won't argue that some awful things must have happened because of that invasion but the writer is using things like a mentally ill child being shot down at a check point and a missile falling on a wedding party to show that terrible things happened. The problem that I have is that these are the kinds of things that nobody can look at and say that it isn't tragic. What about the innocents that were killed that weren't so lily white? The author is slapping you into agreeing with him instead of slowly drawing you in with good writing and seducing you into agreeing and seeing that POV.
Clumsy, manipulative writing that caused me to DNF - 1 star.
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I haven't gotten to that one yet and I really want to read it! I just wish on this one that he had been a little more subtle.
Oh, and yes I'm from that book group.
I just finished this book and it truly is awful. The ending was just idiotic. Good thing you didn't finish this book.
Oh dear. What happened?
Oh, that's just as idiotic as the rest of the book!
Oh no an author that doesn't sugarcoat the suffering of innocents and depicts every inch of the horror ?? Oh noooooooo 🙄
Perhaps you should take another read of my review, you might see that what I mentioned is that the author was only causing tragedies that nobody could disagree were tragic. I would have liked something more everyday and less manipulative. There were people who died that weren't children and brides and easily empathized with. Skilled writing could have shown that those were tragedies too. This did not, in fact, depict "every inch of horror," only the ones that nobody could disagree are horrors.
Idk what did you expected of a war zone.... But the narration is top notch and conveys more than just "awwww that sad lemme shed a year real quick", if you wanna feel like life continues even in the middle of warring factions then just look for specific plots that do just that....
I genuinely can not believe what I just read. Do you realize how tone deaf you sound? Manipulate the readers emotions? Wait till you find out that even WORSE happened. This book was nothing compared to the absolute inhumanity Iraqis faced. And you rated it 2 stars because the author showed how brutal that war was? And you’re calling it manipulation? Unbelievable.
You are from the ATW book club right? I'm about to receive a copy of this book from my library. Sad to hear that you didn't have a good experience reading this. I read the other Iraq book selection - "The Corpse Washer" - and I highly recommend that. It wasn't manipulative, instead the author allows the reader to see what it is like to live in a war-torn country. Hope you give that one a try (it's less than 200 pages and all chapters are short). Have a nice day!