A Hand Full of Stars

Linda Perry is a senior policy analyst with the Ontario Ministry of
Colleges and Universities.

This is the journal of a teenage boy growing up amid the political
strife of modern Damascus. The journal style aims at a tone of candid
self-expression, full of the romantic posturing, parental rebellion, and
heroics of a 14-year-old. Youthful readers may be impressed as the hero
becomes embroiled in an underground press and ensnared in political
intrigue, and sneaks to forbidden rendezvous with his girlfriend.

Stylistically, however, the novel has serious shortcomings. The journal
technique is cumbersome and finally fails in that the author does a
great deal more explaining than one would be expected to do to oneself.
There are some credibility gaps in the young hero’s approach to many
situations; he is tiresomely mature and noble. A more serious flaw lies
in the translation. The tone and language fail to make the cultural leap
through both Syrian and German to English, and too often the mood is
broken by clumsy and inappropriate word choices.