The Beekeper of Aleppo by Christy Lefteri (ARC Review)

The Beekeeper of Aleppo by Christy Lefteri
Publisher: Ballantine Books (August 27, 2019)
Description from the publisher: 

Nuri is a beekeeper and Afra, his wife, is an artist. Mornings, Nuri rises early to hear the call to prayer before driving to his hives in the countryside. On weekends, Afra sells her colorful landscape paintings at the open-air market. They live a simple life, rich in family and friends, in the hills of the beautiful Syrian city of Aleppo—until the unthinkable happens. When all they love is destroyed by war, Nuri knows they have no choice except to leave their home. But escaping Syria will be no easy task: Afra has lost her sight, leaving Nuri to navigate her grief as well as a perilous journey through Turkey and Greece toward an uncertain future in Britain.

Nuri is sustained only by the knowledge that waiting for them is his cousin Mustafa, who has started an apiary in Yorkshire and is teaching fellow refugees beekeeping. As Nuri and Afra travel through a broken world, they must confront not only the pain of their own unspeakable loss but dangers that would overwhelm even the bravest souls. Above all, they must make the difficult journey back to each other, a path once so familiar yet rendered foreign by the heartache of displacement.

This novel delves into timely and important subjects with great heart. Lefteri spent several years working in Greece as a UNICEF volunteer, helping refugees from Syria and Afghanistan. Her empathy and passion for their cause is more than evident in her writing, which essentially felt like an amalgamous character study of those she most certainly encountered in her work. Perhaps that's where I felt a little disconnected from this book, as it was hard for me to feel an urgency to pick it up without a good deal of narrative drive. The book begins where Nuri and Aftra end up, so there isn't a question if they will make it to their ultimate destination. There is also a sort of plot twist that is not at all a surprise, and I'm not sure if it was meant to be, or if it was to illustrate the state of Nuri's PTSD. The illustrative imagery and symbolism of the bees, flight, and our dream life versus reality was lovely, as was the push and pull of husband and wife finding their way back to each other after immense loss.

"I realize I have forgotten to love her. Here is her body, here are the lines on her face, here is the feel of her skin, here is the wound across her cheek that leads into her, like a road, all the way to her heart. These are the roads we take."

In the end I would say that stories of refugees are something we could use more of, not less, and I respect Lefteri for putting this work into the world. Increasing awareness, creating empathy for those that happen to be born into a different life, or a life that could just as easily become ours is so vital these days. I honestly think it would have been a more impactful read had it been written by someone of Syrian descent or had been a nonfiction account. Since I've already started looking for some recommendations, I think that this book had an impact on me, regardless. So far the recs I've seen are: The Newcomers by Helen Thorpe, We Crossed a Bridge and it Trembled by Wendy Pearlman, and The Map of Salt and Stars by Zeyn Joukhadar.

Thank you so much to the folks at Penguin Random House/Ballantine for a complimentary advance copy!