Homeland
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Homeland
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Narrated by:
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David Pittu
About this listen
Miren and Bittori have been best friends all their lives, growing up in the same small town in the north of Spain. With limited interest in politics, the terrorist threat posed by ETA seems to affect them little. When Bittori’s husband starts receiving threatening letters from the violent group, however - demanding money, accusing him of being a police informant - she turns to her friend for help. But Miren’s loyalties are torn: her son Joxe Mari has just been recruited to the group as a terrorist, and to denounce them as evil would be to condemn her own flesh and blood. Tensions rise, relationships fracture and events race towards a violent, tragic conclusion....
Fernando Aramburu’s Homeland is a gripping story and devastating exploration of the meaning of family, friendship, what it’s like to live in the shadow of terrorism and how countries and their people can possibly come to terms with their violent pasts.
©Fernando Aramburu 2019 (P)2019 Macmillan Digital AudioListeners also enjoyed...
Critic reviews
"It’s been a long time since I’ve read a book that was so persuasive and moving, so intelligently conceived." (Mario Vargas Llosa)
Amazing story
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Incredible
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Heartfelt
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poor
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But it was disappointing.
The novel feels like a soap opera, the characters are clunky and predictable and six hours in they haven't changed. They are "pretty" or brutish, smart, withdrawn, entrepreneurial or poor ... each one can be summarised with a single adjective and the writing lacks nuance, psychological insight and it doesn't evoke any empathy. The wealthy Basque industrialist who is assassinated in spite of his generosity to the poor is "good" and anyone in ETA is inherently "bad". Nor moral dilemmas, no reasoning, no shades of grey. The plot just trundles along like an old car mid-speed on a straight road with no real surprises.
My second issue is connected with the first. I don't know how the rest of the book plays out but so far the description of ETA has been entirely one dimensional. The boys who joined ETA were thugs since their childhood days when they enjoyed killing birds for no reason, children born violent, seemingly inherently evil and most of all really stupid.
(The even have to forcefully enlist help to write the ETA banners).
Like so many other conflicts, the Basque fight for independence is a case of "One man's freedom fighter is another man's terrorist". There is not doubt that the Basque struggle was violent but there is a historical context that has given rise to it, yet in the first six hours the novel fails in a monumental way to explore this. There is no mention of the violence of the Spanish state (a brief allusion to the violent Franco dictatorship, easily missed ...) and there is zero attempt to explore the motivation of the boys who join ETA (they are just stupid and violent) ...
The fact that the sister of one the ETA fighter marries a policeman who represents the Spanish state is a plot point that stays unexplored (she falls in love with him because the scent of his Eu de Cologne precedes him every time he approaches in spite of the fact that he sounds so arrogant that even her best friend dismisses him.
And so - six hours in - i have learned nothing unexpected that could have given me any new insight or understanding and with disappointment, i give up.
i would have liked to like this book.
I really tried but the story just kept disappointing me
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