Evil Eye: A Novel

This is not my typical genre but I have resonated so much with this story. Coming to US from another country and having such a different upbringing. My generation in my country was the one change it all. We were more independent, more driven, always looking for more than fulfilling basic necessities. I truly enjoyed to listen to this book... I have felt so deeply for the main character as I have experienced similar beginning to my early childhood. Oh, I have goosebumps. I often feel like my story should be told. This was different but I so many ways so similar. Thank you for such a deep book, giving us another perspective. WOW!

A little slow to start, but definitely made some accurate and descriptive points about the struggle that exists for a woman trying to find her way in society. Redeeming ending, though would have liked more!

An eloquent depiction of how trauma can alter the mental health of a family for generations. Displays the beauty and struggle of romantic and platonic relationships and how the main character handles her journey toward a happy life and healthy mental state.

“She ran her fingers along the canvas, her palette a sea of glorious blues, the eye in the center glaring…An evil eye is an evil eye, and you know what happens once you’re cursed… ‘My dreams died the day you were born.’” This is the narrative under which professor and artist Yara grows, determined not to pass on the legacy of generational trauma to her own daughters. However, the more she refuses to acknowledge the pain endured, “their future became clear to her, trapped behind the twisted glare of an evil eye, a filter of sorrow tainting everything they knew…looking at the world through a distorted lens, heavy with dread, always afraid. She couldn’t do that to them.” “Though they’d left Palestine in search of a better life, they’d spent their whole lives stuck in place emotionally, drowning in their unacknowledged pain, until eventually it had spilled over onto her…Her mother and grandmother had lived their lives feeling haunted by the curse of the past, and so would she if she continued on this path, her mind stuck looking backward, trapped by this old pain, unable to move forward. But she wasn't going to live like that anymore.” While the evil eye may be dismissed as Middle Eastern superstition, social media is the evil eye of the West. “The entire world must be cursed…to spend so much of our days walking around with our eyes glued to a device that only left us feeling more alone…She didn’t want to waste her limited years on this earth in an endless, self-defeating pursuit of money and status, that what she wanted wasn’t only work but a meaningful existence. To live a life that was inspired, creative, free.” “The choices in her life felt like roads, all looping back to the same destination. But it was in her hands to steer the wheel, her decision alone how far she could go…Change didn’t happen with a single recognition, a single step in the right direction. It was messy, courage come and gone, steps taken forward, then back. It was bravery laced with fear…Like a warm cup of mint chai in my hands on a rainy day,” Etaf Rum’s Evil Eye is the Palestinian Colleen Hoover’s It Ends With Us.