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A Brighter Fear

3.61 of 5 stars 3.61 · rating details · 33 ratings · 11 reviews

A beautiful love story and contemporary fairytale set against the backdrop of the Iraq war, this stunning and moving novel will break your heart, only to put it back together again…

This is the story of Lina, a teenage girl from Baghdad. It starts in 2003, as the bombs begin to fall on the city.

In it, Lina fights to survive, to find a life for herself amid the chaos of war,...more

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Published June 7th 2012 by HarperCollins Children’s

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Jun 12, 2012 Maja rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: made-me-cry, all-the-right-choices, arc-2012, debut-author, contemporary-fiction, reviewed-in-2012, ya

Baghdad 2003. Lina is living with her father, a university professor, and dreaming about becoming an architect. Her mother, a successful lawyer, has disappeared four years earlier, taken on her way home from work, never to be seen or heard from again. Rumors of war are getting louder by the minute, but Lina’s father refuses to leave Baghdad in case her mother returns. When the bombs begin to fall and foreign soldiers become a part of everyday life, one by one Lina’s dreams start crumbling around...more Baghdad 2003. Lina is living with her father, a university professor, and dreaming about becoming an architect. Her mother, a successful lawyer, has disappeared four years earlier, taken on her way home from work, never to be seen or heard from again. Rumors of war are getting louder by the minute, but Lina’s father refuses to leave Baghdad in case her mother returns. When the bombs begin to fall and foreign soldiers become a part of everyday life, one by one Lina’s dreams start crumbling around her, until she has nothing left but desperate hope tied to an impossible boy.

Night after night, far too many nights for me to remember, or want to remember, the bombing continued. And with every bang, every crash, every explosion, I waited, expecting our house to be hit. For my world to end. I couldn’t think about tomorrow, that maybe next it was my turn to die.

The beginning of Lina’s story was strongly reminiscent of Lena’s story in Between Shades of Gray, and not just because of their names. It felt almost like reading Between Shades of Gray: Iraqi edition, and I had fun comparing the two for a while, but I was glad when they diverged after the first few chapters. As much as I loved Between Shades of Gray, I like diversity even more.

Lina’s account was interrupted a few times by very short chapters that focused on her mother’s disappearance in 1999. Interrupting a first person narrative with occasional chapters in third person and from a different point of view is a narrative technique I don’t particularly care for, so I was both dazed and dismayed when Drewery abandoned Lina suddenly and in a very difficult moment to give us three pages about her mother being captured four years earlier. The first time was the hardest because it followed a very emotional scene and I had a hard time adjusting to the sudden change, but it was difficult even later, when I knew to expect it. I can think of a few better ways to tell the same story, and I wish one of them had been chosen instead.

I can’t shake the feeling that it was simply too early for this book. Perhaps I’m wrong, but it was clear that the author strived for impartiality, and with wars, that sort of thing requires a lot of time and emotional distance, if it is ever even possible. I understand the appeal, the need to go where no YA author has gone before, but I also understand that sometimes you just bite off more than you can chew. No matter how sensitive Drewery’s approach, and no matter how brave she might be for deciding to write this story in the first place, the fact remains that in trying to be impartial, she remained superficial.

There are, however, a few things I greatly admire. Drewery’s writing style is clear and concise, but with great emotional depth. The easiness with which I connected with Lina proves that Kerry Drewery is an excellent writer. I’m already excited about her next project.

A copy of this book was kindly provided by the publisher, HarperCollins Children’s Books, for review purposes.

Also posted at The Nocturnal Library (less)

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Jun 19, 2012 LH Johnson rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: young-adult

A Brighter Fear by Kerry Drewery is, I think, the first piece of British children's literature to directly address the war in Iraq. (Please do correct me if I'm wrong!). A while back on my blog I wrote about the necessity of children's literature addressing war here and would particularly reccommend Lydia Kokkola's Representing the Holocaust in Children's Literature to those who wish to learn more.

A Brighter Fear is a groundbreaking book in many ways and one that's also very very curious. It's...more A Brighter Fear by Kerry Drewery is, I think, the first piece of British children's literature to directly address the war in Iraq. (Please do correct me if I'm wrong!). A while back on my blog I wrote about the necessity of children's literature addressing war here and would particularly reccommend Lydia Kokkola's Representing the Holocaust in Children's Literature to those who wish to learn more.

A Brighter Fear is a groundbreaking book in many ways and one that's also very very curious. It's the story of Lina; teenager, Christian, female - and Iraqi. She's growing up in the most difficult circumstances possible and it's not easy. Growing up never is.

Drewery creates a convincing and believable character in Lina. She's palpably sad, and tense, and fragile. Every word she says has the sensation of being very deliberately chosen for this point in time. Here, though, is where the book gets quite curiously intriguing. It's told in a first person past tense style: I said, I believed, I watched etc. The other key signifier of Drewery's writing here is a preponderance for sentences that begin with "And" or "But". There's a lot of them here.

Now usually I'd be picking up on these stylistic tendencies because reading a lot of sentences that look the same is a tiring experience. You become used to the shape of the word, of the paragraph, and as such start to slowly disengage from the text. A Brighter Fear manages to become a book that doesn't really lend itself to be read - it's one that you engage with. Time and time again I found myself reading sections out loud, feeling the words on my tongue and picking up on the inherent rhythms of the text. It combines to produce quite a spooky, unnerving affect and being all in past tense gives it a very definitive feel of uncertainty. It seems to say this is Lina's moment, this is where it all changed, and the Lina that's telling you this might not be the same one who's in the story.

This is a book that's very near to the bone in many places. There's a subplot with Lina's mother which is incredibly painful to read. It needs to be read with an awareness of the recent nature of these events for if A Brighter Fear is something, it is very quietly provocative and disturbing.

The more I read A Brighter Fear, the more I felt uncomfortable and the more I became wrapped up in what happens to Lina. It's a big, brave story to try and tell and I sort of think that Drewery does succeed in the whole. She presents a novel full of pain, and beauty, and tear-filled moments and when she writes her big moments, she writes them very beautifully.

But I think where A Brighter Fear perhaps succeeds more is when it forgets the bombs, the terror, and the sad sad resignation of the populace. It is in the quieter moments; the moments where people just talk or think or love. After all, it's people who make conflict - and it's people who will solve it.
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Aug 03, 2012 Sam rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: contemporary-fiction, fiction, kindle, middle-east, owned, review-copies, romance, war, ya

Don't judge this one by the cover. It may look bright and cheerful but A Brighter Fear is a hard-hitting account of the Iraq war through the eyes of seventeen year old Lina. We first meet Lina in Baghdad in 2003, where she is living with her father in the prelude to the American-led invasion. Lina describes a culture of repression, where people are scared to even think negative thoughts about the regime, let alone express them ("a lifetime of being allowed no opinion but the right one"). Lina ha...more Don't judge this one by the cover. It may look bright and cheerful but A Brighter Fear is a hard-hitting account of the Iraq war through the eyes of seventeen year old Lina. We first meet Lina in Baghdad in 2003, where she is living with her father in the prelude to the American-led invasion. Lina describes a culture of repression, where people are scared to even think negative thoughts about the regime, let alone express them ("a lifetime of being allowed no opinion but the right one"). Lina has experience of this threat as her lawyer mother was taken away by the secret service years ago and no one has heard anything about her since. As the bombs start to fall, Lina shelters in the basement with her Papa during the night but attempts to live a normal life throughout the day.

But normal has ceased to exist. As a Christian, Lina is shunned by her former friends as it would be dangerous for them to be seen with her. Her father takes on a job interpreting for the US army, making him a target. When she continues to walk around with her hair uncovered, Lina is the victim of an acid attack. Through Lina we hear of rape, torture and see dismembered bodies abandoned by the roadside. Interspersed with all this is the story of what happened to Lina's mother, Sacha, when she was taken by the secret police, starting with horrific torture scenes.

So A Brighter Fear isn't your average young adult novel. I really appreciated it's boldness at setting down what the Iraqi war must have been like to actually live through. If I had read this as a teenager, I would have found it even more shocking than I did as an adult. I also appreciated how Drewery refrained from making this a black and white novel, she showed the shades of grey involved in the conflict. Lina and her family hate Saddam due to what happened to her mother so initially they welcome the invasion. But the trigger-happy soldiers and the fact that "we all look the same to them" makes Lina reconsider. There's never any 'good guys' or 'bad guys' in the sense of the conflict and that struck me as realistic - who can be a good guy in a war situation? Drewery writes about fear very well and we see Lina's attempts to overcome her fear, something that made her relatable;

"I was living a horror film with no end credits in sight. But this wasn't a film, or a dream, or a story. This was life. And I couldn't just press the off button, or wake up, or slam the pages shut. I had to live it."

Despite all these positive elements, I think the 'love story' between Lina and an American soldier was a mistake. It came across as an add-on to the real story, an attempt to make the book more appealing to it's intended audience (it's even the tag-line of the novel despite it playing a minor role in the story). I get that Lina didn't have any friends, that she would cling to any escape clause from her life, but it could have been written as a friendship rather than an impossible love story. There are a few times where Lina and Steve manage to meet despite impossible circumstances, and these situations felt contrived.

But overall, I was pleasantly surprised by A Brighter Fear. It was bold and direct and had a lot to say about the Iraq war without shying away from the unpleasant aspects or simplifying it. A job well done.(less)

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Jun 19, 2012 Luna rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A Brighter Fear is not an easy read, it’s a book you know will task you before you even turn the first page. It was sitting on my shelf for a while before I picked it up.

Reading Lina’s story is like reading an autobiography – there is very little dialogue throughout the book instead we learn what is happening through Lina’s observations and thoughts. Thoughts, which at the beginning of the book she makes clear, she shouldn’t have. It makes the book very personal but also hard to read.

There are a...more

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Mar 20, 2012 Helen rated it 3 of 5 stars

This book is really intriguing and I think it would be a good choice for anyone interested in thinking about the Iraq war from an inside perspective or even as part of a course on the sociology of war. The writing is quite good at times and the story well paced. As I reached the end of the novel I found myself wondering what the point had been and if anything had really changed throughout the story, but having finished the book I think that's the point. Lina comes of age in the most uncertain se...more

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Nov 12, 2012 Margaret rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Baghdad 2005, narrated by seventeen year old Lina whose mother has been missing for four years.The americans are about to occupy the city,later they do.I enjoyed this book.It brought the dust, the dirt, the heat and the sheer desolation of a city at war very vividly to life. The fear and suspicion were present throughout. The relationship between Lina and Steve were very sensitively handled, one felt this could have blossomed into something deeper under different circumstances.Good read. I did h...more

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Jan 15, 2013 Booka Uhu rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: teen-and-ya-reads

It’s described as a love story but I think that’s not quite right. When people say ‘love story’ to me, I think of lots of sighing, love letters, meaningful looks across a room and lots of overly-complicated feelings. This book has absolutely none of these things, apart from having some genuinely complicated emotions and conflicts of morals. Lina falls for the one person it would be the most difficult to have a relationship with, but it’s intense enough to leave an impression. I found myself gen...more

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Mar 06, 2013 Spongebob rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is an excellent novel for young adults. An important story, very well told. The first page alone is gorgeous. It deals with crucial issues and yet has a compelling plot and realistic characters. Sad yet ultimately hopeful. Read it.

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Oct 29, 2012 georgia -ωαт¢н ɱє fℓу- rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: couldn-t-finish, books-i-ve-reviewed

I'm not having much luck with books lately...

I hated this. I couldn't get into it, I didn't like Lina and I eventually gave up about halfway through. I was bored. :(

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May 20, 2013 Sian rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Brilliant book and can't wait to look after the author at the Leeds Book Awards on Thursday :D

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Jul 29, 2012 Eamonn rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: childrens, ya

A Brighter Fear gets a mention on my blog here: http://www.displacementactivity.co.uk...

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May 04, 2013 Maisha marked it as to-read · review of another edition

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Mar 29, 2013 Mariya Nurhussein rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Apr 06, 2013 Margaret rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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Feb 11, 2013 Rebekah rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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