2012 book 8

Naomi Benaron's Running the Rift
I always feel a sense of moral obligation to read books about genocide, even if I don't really want to read them. But this is getting stellar reviews and so I decided to just dive in (I actually typed "bite the bullet" there but that just felt inappropriate). Anyway, Benaron's novel involves a young boy in Rwanda who has dreams of running in the Olympics--at least until the Tutsis start to be targeted. We follow his experiences as things get worse and worse, even as he gets closer to attaining his dreams. I will say this was not as harrowing a read as I was expecting, since almost all of the violence happens off the page and is never discussed in great detail, though the scale of the genocide is pretty clear. And I'm not going to comment on white ladies writing books with African protagonists; Benaron's historicization and characterization are pretty solid and I do think the world needs more good books about terrible things that most people don't really know about. The resolution of the story itself is a little iffier for me. A-.


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A review copy was provided by the publisher.