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One thing that I think is important to note - most Arabic speaking ŷ������ reviewers of this book are consistently rating this book only 1-2 stars. I have to wonder why that is, why they don't like this, what he missed. I would love to know.

"Cities die, just like people."

I, like many Westerners, was drawn to this book because of the events in the most recent years, this complete and utter decimation of a city that was formerly vibrant and diverse. In fact when I got Amazon gift cards for Christmas, I couldn't buy this book for six weeks on that site because it was out of stock. Everyone was buying it around that time. And then as the travel ban was announced, I was even more certain I wanted to read books on the ban list.

"He spoke eloquently and at length of his personal shame. Because he was a witness to this moment which everyone would pretend to forget, if they were able to meet each other's eyes in fifty years' time."

Another connection - my book club read a book last year, Skylark Farm, that was about the Armenian Genocide, but interesting in that many of the refugees were headed to Aleppo!

This book is the story of the city of Aleppo, seen through the different lenses of members of a family. The novel starts with the mother dying, but the author jumps around in time quite a bit, so there are plenty of scenes where the mother is living and the children are small, or when the mother herself is a child or teenager. It is probably easier to find ones footing if you are more versed in Syrian history than I am; I had to look some of it up.

"A house containing nothing but misery doesn't need a door to protect it from petty thieves."

And still, the novel is only set from the mid 1960s to the early 2000s, so it is not really covering the recent events in the news, but the earlier revolutions, civil wars, violence, conflict, and changes in rules and ways of being. The mother in particular is the lens through which we see the city change, because she loved the old city, full of the arts and leisure - restaurants with friends, an elaborate social game where she thrived, even with a brother who was openly gay. As the revolution occurs and a military presence takes over the city, safety starts to be in question, alongside individuality, sexual expression, and music (her son is a violinist and we see this change through his life.) There is one chilling scene where it is announced that the president is dead, and she cautions her family that this is a loyalty test. She turns out to be right.

"She was trying to rid herself of the smells that still clung to her soul and her body: the odor of the Party, the paratroopers, and the past."

I'm not sure how representative the characters are of Syrians. I was surprised at the daughter's seeming safety despite moving from sexpot to snitch. The handling of the disabled daughter by the author seemed indelicate, and I couldn't decide if he actually thought of disabled people that way or he was trying to show how a society's viewpoint.

"Aleppo itself was as ephemeral as the act of forgetting; anything which remained of its true form would become a lie, reinvented by us day after day, so as not to die."

If you're looking to this novel to understand what is happening in Syria today, I'm not sure it will help. If you are looking to this novel to understand what Aleppo used to be, it might provide some of the picture.