Review:
Message in a bottle by Valerie Zenatti
Bloomsbury, 2008. ISBN 9780747590446
Unless you have recently arrived from Mars or even further afield, you
would know that the Middle East presented one of the more intractable
problems of the 20th Century, and still no resolution in sight.
Message
in a bottle is an attempt to personalize the conflict and connect
the
reader to the essential humanity of the ordinary person caught on
either side of the divide.
The novel is a two-hander, the protagonists being a 17-year old Israeli
girl and a 20-year old Palestinian male living in Gaza. Initial contact
was made through Tal Levine, the Israeli girl, putting a note with her
email address in a bottle, and getting her soldier brother to drop it
in Gaza. The narrative then progresses through 'direct-to-camera'
thoughts and email correspondence of Naim, aka 'Gazaman', and Tal.
Although the novel doesn't provide a magic formula, in fact remarks
that 'history is relentless, it doesn't think about people who
want a quiet life, it just grinds on, sometimes breaking everything in
its way', there is an up-beat conclusion.
Recent studies discussed on Radio National's
The Book Show have
claimed that readers of fiction experience a deeper empathy and
understanding of our shared humanity compared to non-readers or even
readers of non-fiction, and I think the novel is quite successful in
this. Here is Tal explaining to her boyfriend the realities of what
it's like to witness a suicide bombing:
'the TV doesn’t let you smell
the smell, or hear the silence, that second of silence straight after
the explosion, the second when everyone's dazed, petrified. And then
the screams, the moans, the sobbing, the groaning, they all cry like
little children, the injured, even if they're fifty years old.'
This is very powerful, although the writing of Tal's inner thoughts at
times is a bit clunky and cringe-making, possibly a result of the
translation (from French). The novel
Broken Bridge (by Lynne
Reid
Banks, 1994 re-issued 20007) deals with similar subject matter, but
with far more nuanced characters and developed narrative. However it is
a much longer book: if your students require a shorter read, I would
certainly recommend
Message in a bottle. (Would also recommend
a
lovely recent movie,
The band's visit, about an Egyptian Police
Orchestra visiting Israel, but accidentally stuck overnight in a
small-town backwater.)
Peter Helman
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