Review: The Almond Tree by Michelle Cohen Carasanti

Book: The Almond Tree
Author: Michelle Cohen Corasanti
Series: N/A
Pages: 348
Genre: Historical Fiction - War
Rating: ★★★★☆


I won this book through Goodreads First Reads but that does not affect my opinion on the book.

I usually really like historical fiction books, and this was no exception. Just like any good books from this genre it provided insight into how people used to live. But this is different in one way: it is set in wartime Palestine (1955 and onwards).

Now, I'm ashamed to say that prior to reading this book I knew nothing, absolutely nothing, about the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis. I knew that there were always wars in the Middle East, but that's it*. You can imagine how shocked and disgusted I was to discover that Jews, after everything that'd happened in the second world war, had then gone and done something so terrible to Palestinians. It's explained more further into the book, but at first it was just a "wow" moment.

This book was such an eye-opener into how they lived too, and how terrible they got treated. I was so disgusted and saddened to read about the main character's life as a child, all the hardships and injustices his whole family faced. And the thing is that this sort of thing actually happened to millions of people, it's not just fiction. That was the thought that was nagging at me the whole time, that countless other people had to live through this.

I think what made this story good was that it was based on real history and exposed so much of the terrible life Palestinians had. But it was good in other ways too, of course. I was completely unable to put it down while I read the first two parts. It grabbed my attention from the first page and didn't let it go until I was 200 pages in. I was put off reading it around that point because I really didn't like the person that Ichmad (the protagonist) had become. In fact, I just wanted to slap him across the face. He didn't want to solve any of the problems in his home country, only take everyone to America, which he seemed to think was so perfect. He was just so selfish and naive when he was an adult, much more than he had been as a child/teen/young person. I forgave him in the end, and realised that the author was just trying to show us what a life like that can do to a person and show us that Ichmad was a real person, not a Mary-Sue.

All in all, a wonderful book which I highly recommend to anyone, even if you do not like this sort of thing. The Almond Tree really raises awareness about so many issues and everyone can learn from this book. If you read this book then I'm sure that the next time you're watching the news and see x number of people in ______ country killed and wounded, it won't just be more of the same thing, you'll feel connected to all these people suffering miles and miles away. Yes, you might feel guilty, but at least acknowledging that this sort of thing is happening is much better than turning a blind eye to it all.



(*Isn't that terrible that I knew nothing about any of it? I mean, we're not taught anything to do with this is school. We spend countless history lessons learning about the first and second world wars, yet get taught nothing about things in other countries, unless it's related to our country and we were in the right. That's really  annoying me right now)