He knew how little it took to make a man into meat: the wrong blow, the wrong gunshot, the wrong flick of a blade, turn of a car, presence of a microorganism in a handshake, a cough. He was aware that alone a person is almost nothing. (page:7)

Some parts of the book where beautiful.
And so realistic feeling that it was almost too much to read some sections, where the feelings and fears where so realistically portrayed on the page that i felt as if i was actually feeling them!
So the writing?
The writing was FANTASTIC.
It transported me into the story, swept me into it, almost drowned me a few times in the intensity of what the author was sharing and how he was going it.

Geography is destiny, respond the historians. (page:9)

The beginnings of the war, how it all came to be, how fast it all changed, how enormously it change the lives of people and how drastically fast it all happened? One second someone lived, the next the person was lying dead. For no other reason than being in the wrong place at the wrong time?

One's relationship to windows no change in the city. A window was the border through which death was possibly most likely to come. Windows could not stop even the most flagging round of ammunition: any spot indoors with a view of th eouside was a spot potentially in the crossfire.... (page: 68)

Those moments in the book, where so brilliantly written!

They felt to real and honest and really quiet scary in some moments as well (could also be currently the world's situation and how scary all that feels anyways and while its clearly not at all comparable to war at all, its still a bit scary in a similar way of having to fear living your own home but at the same time having every now and again.

Maybe this book and what i loved about it really was one of those perfect combinations of "right book, right time" moments. Could be.

.... but that is the way of things, for when we migrate, we murder from our lives those we leave behind. (page: 94)

Because while i loved some aspects of this book, and how highly i want to praise the writing, the story telling and even the characters and their responses to the situations?

I also didn't love the book as much anymore as soon as the magical realism aspects started to really become part of it and weren't just simple little mentions anymore.

And by not as much i mean it went down hill from that moment on.

I think i understand why the author choose to write it that way and who doesn't wish desperately for a door to take them somewhere else when things are unbearable hard or unsafe where you are?

But i loved those realistic moments before, and those doors took them away from me and with that took me out of the story.
I don't want o say the doors made it too easy, because it certainly wasn't easier being in a refugee camp than being in a war torn city, at least not by a lot, but at the same time... it kind of was an easy way out of a horrible situation for the characters?

They needed a new start? Door!
They wanted something else? DOOR!
They didn't find what the where looking for where they were? DOOR!

Of course it wasn't that easy as i just made it sound, it wasn't as if those thing just popped out of nowhere and let them out where every they wished.

But it did feel that way a bit.

I just think that if the author would have left the magical realism aspects out of the story and made it "just" fiction, just real life fiction, without doors and would have continued writing the realistic real life, real feeling moments the way he did before? This book would have been one of the best books ever written.

For me since the magical realism is part of it?
It was just a good book.
I did like it.
I loved some sections of it.
I think the author has beautiful writing and i want to read more by him since he had such fantastic quotes throughout this book! Such true and honest reflections and views of life just thrown into the story!

But this book as it is wasn't the best for me personally.

Still. If you want a beautiful but heartbreaking story and don't mind magical realism?
Give it a read! This might be the perfect one for you!