'𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝒑𝒍𝒂𝒚 𝒊𝒔 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒃𝒚 𝒘𝒉𝒊𝒄𝒉 𝜤'𝒍𝒍 𝒄𝒂𝒕𝒄𝒉 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒄𝒐𝒏𝒔𝒄𝒊𝒆𝒏𝒄𝒆 𝒐𝒇 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝑲𝒊𝒏𝒈'

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I read Enter Ghost as part of Read Palestinian April and it was a fantastic book to read to explore the idea of Palestine as a concept as well as an identity.

Focused on, and told from the perspective of Sonia, Enter Ghost is a vehicle for all kinds of nuanced explorations of personal and national identity,  resistance, art as resistance and family dynamics. It's a beautifully complex novel which threads in the production of Hamlet to great effect.

I cannot do justice to the layers of identity Hammad works with here, the concepts of national unity opposed to disparate and diasporic (is that a word) experiences of 'being' Palestinian. The novel's strengths, to me, lie in the study of these concepts and the literary conceit of the production of Hamlet as a way to dig further.

Where the novel really didn't work for me was Sonia. She was really quite annoying. I'm sure it was for a reason but she did my head in and not in a way that was fruitful. She was so full of her own self importance. She had moments of development where I thought she might be saved but then resorted back to her own navel-gazing. I was very fed up with her by the end. And because we see all others through her, all the other characters suffered in turn. I didn't feel anything for any of the characters particularly, except Mariam, and that was only because Sonia was such a douchebag to her it was almost a reflex.

I would recommend this book though. Sonia is just the sort of character that rubs me up the wrong way, and probably if this was third person, I might have found it less oppressive to read.