THE STAR BOOK REVIEW

By Brenda Channer – Martinborough Bookshop

Story-telling is possibly the most powerful and long-lived method of communicating on Earth.

It is how we know where we are, who we are and how to make sense of our journey. 

So when we hear a story that touches us deeply we remember it, return to it and savour it – and we recommend it to others! 

This month I would like to recommend “There Are Rivers In The Sky” by Elif Shafak. It is the story of three people and two great rivers, beginning in the ancient city of Ninevah and resonating all the way to present-day London.

This is beautiful storytelling that is accessible and compelling with language that evokes the abject grinding poverty of Victorian London when the Thames was so polluted it moved as though it were a single mass of sludge but also the light that glitters as if contained in diamonds as it dances across the waters of the Tigris where a girl and her grandmother gather herbs to make medicine.

I am listening to this book as an audio book through Libro.fm. I have only recently discovered audiobooks and am delighted with the experience. When done well (note that all audio books are not equal!) the listening experience evokes the same joy I had as a girl being read to by a teacher. There is something wonderful about being told a story – drawn in to another world by a voice that conveys the characters and the setting and the drama.

As invested in physical books as I am, audio is an alternative way to enjoy the experience of storytelling. In either form, “There Are Rivers In the Sky” will enchant and delight you.

Available from your local bookstore.