Book Review: Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


This book is not an easy read, but it's a good read. The story of Ali's life and her journey from poverty and an abusive childhood and adolescence in Somalia, Saudi Arabia, and Kenya, to her position as a member of the Dutch Parliament, would be enough. But her insights as a woman raised in Islam are equally fascinating. Based on intense, repeated study of the Q'uran, Ali determines that, unlike the fashionable "line" would have people believe, Islam is not at heart a peaceful, tolerant religion that has been interpreted or twisted to oppress women and girls and to lead to wars and death threats (some carried out) against Muslims and non-Muslims who preach against it or portray it in a negative light. Instead, Ali determines, the basic tenets of the religion allow the oppression of women and children and their subjection to men in the name of submission to Allah's will, as well as the other violence--moderation, peace, and tolerance are the "interpretations," although of course there are Muslims who try to live in the latter way. But Ali says they are not following the "true" version of Islam, which she determines is not for her, or anyone who wants to do more than "submit." 60 Minutes did a segment on Ali after the murder of Theo Van Gogh, the Dutch film producer who was murdered by Muslim fanatics after he and Ali made a film that showed Islam as oppressive to women, so her story may sound familiar, but the book is a great deal more than a short TV segment could show. Highly recommended, but not for the faint of heart.



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Book Review: The Silence of God, by Gale Sears

The Silence of God by Gale Sears

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


This was a really good book, a faith-promoting story of an LDS family's survival during the Bolshevik Revolution--until I found out at the end that the faith-promoting part was entirely fiction, with only the bare outline of the beginnings of the story being fact. Sears says up front that this is, indeed, a "historical novel"--it's even on the cover. In the Acknowledgements, Sears writes, "This book is one of fiction, but the Lindlof family was a real family and were eyewitnesses to the tumultuous years surrounding the Bolshevik Revolution. The events depicted in the novel actually happened to them. To these elements I have been true" (pp. v-vi, emphasis added). So far so good--the book includes brief footnotes at the end of most chapters, defining terms and identifying various parties, like the "White Russians" and the Cheka--the secret police. These notes add to the historicity of the book. The author also gives her historical sources for various scenes where the Lindlofs were "eyewitnesses" to history in St. Petersburg (then Petrograd) during this time--although the characters' ability to witness so many major events and see or even meet historical figures strains credulity, but that is a common device in accounts that focus on actual events as seen through the eyes of fictional characters. Unfortunately, this book is meant to be the Lindlof family history, not a history of the Russian Revolution.



Then the Lindlof family is arrested by the secret police. The parents and youngest child are allowed to emigrate to Helsinki, Finland, and the other children--two daughters and three sons, in the novel--are sent to the infamous system of Soviet prison camps later known as the "gulag archipelago." At this point, a note to the chapter states, "The story of the Lindlofs' 1918 arrest by Cheka police was documented, as was the fate of the Lindlof children" (p. 174, note 2). So the reader carries on, believing that the remainder of the novel is based of the "documented fate" of the Lindlof children, that these "events actually happened to them," with the author filling in scenes and conversations that were not recorded by history, as historical novelists often do--within the outlines of the known history of the people in the book. This "history" of the Lindlof children truly evidences the hand of God and His miracles in saving them from some of the worst abuses of the gulag. The coincidences are presented as miracles, and, after all, truth is stranger than fiction. Then you reach the end of the book and learn, again in a footnote, that the story of the children in the camps is totally fiction--their actual fates were quite different. All that miraculous intervention had no basis in the Lindlofs' actual history.



The book not even a "historical" novel, much less an inspirational treatise, when the author departs so drastically from the little that is known about the family, drawing the reader away from what little truth is available after presenting the story as based on the available, "documented" history. I felt deceived and disappointed after enjoying the book and then discovering the "miracles" were completely made up. I'm surprised Deseret Book allowed the author to suggest that the "fate of the Lindlof children" as told in the novel "actually happened to them," because it didn't.



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