Lead Review

• Book: A Brighter Fear
• Location: Baghdad
• Author: Kerry Drewery

In this book Lina is a teenager, who taker the readers by the hand and shows us her city of Baghdad – we experience through her eyes the terror and destruction under Saddam and the shattered hopes and expectations under American rule, after their invasion of 2003.
Lina has lost her Mother who was abducted by Saddam’s henchman, for simply refusing to work for the dictator’s ruling party. As the book progresses we get some insight into her dreadful fate. Lina’s Father, too, becomes a victim of a terror attack whilst going about his daily work, and her Uncle Aziz, with whom she must eventually live, also suffers an assault. Nothing and no-one is safe, everyone lives on a minute by minute basis.
We follow Lina as she has to give up her University studies, as she mourns loss on several fronts, as she dares to follow her feelings for her first, impossible love.
Throughout the novel there is the thread of a story, of the beautiful necklace Lina’s Father gave to her Mother when Lina was born and how it stays with her Mother throughout all her ordeals; yet miraculously finds its way into Lina’s hands through an act of humanity.
This book is about seeing beyond man’s inhumanity to man, it is about preserving dignity and moral standards in the face of adversity, about sacrifice and about one young girl who has the courage to continue with her life; and the courage to still have hope. A thought-provoking novel for those of us who have never had to endure such hardship and fear on a daily basis.
– Bettina Hartas for welovethisbook.com

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