The good
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Strong opening with a boy waking up on a beach, having washed ashore after a shipwreck. Everyone else on the boat died. The authorities want to arrest him, while a young girl tries to help and rescue him.
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An interesting look at the story of undocumented immigrants from Syria, Ethiopia, Egypt, etc. fleeing their homes in a desperate bid to get into Europe (into Greece, presumably), and the role of religion, racism, capitalism, exploitation, police, tourists, and so on.
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There is a gritty realism and darkness to the story.
The not so good
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While the opening is gripping, I felt like the book slowly loosens its grip. After that initial point, I wasn’t particular excited to pick the story up again and keep going. Maybe it’s that the theme is dark and depressing and has so few light or happy moments along the way, and after being beat down for a while, I just wasn’t all that enthusiastic about going back in for more. “Why am I still reading this?”
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The relationships between all the characters felt super strained. The girl and her family have a strained relationship; all the inhabitants of the island seem to be at odds with each other; the cops have weird relationships with people on the island and amongst themselves; the protagonist feels disconnected from everyone, spending most of the story surrounded by strangers, with no particular bond to anyone other than the girl (and I didn’t find their bond all that believe). Perhaps this is intentional, as the whole story is of immigrants who are disconnected from society. But the result is that every interaction between characters feels stressful and uncomfortable, which doesn’t make pleasant reading on the one hand, and somewhat undermines the feel of the story on the other. I get it, it’s a serious story about a serious, dark topic, but even the darkest stories need to come up for air now and then, if only to emphasize the darkness. Now and then, you need someone to crack a smile, or tell a joke, or exchange a hug.
