It added an eeriness to the book-for the longest time, I wasn’t at all sure if Wassim was actually alive, or if all of this was some kind of ghostly fever dream. There’s also a fantastical element to the book, as there was in Ramadan’s first novel, with the presence of a ghost in Wassim’s narrative. But that only serves to make them incredibly human (and thus, more sympathetic). And, as the reader discovers as the book progresses, they’ve fucked up a few times as well. Okay, they’re not perfect, they have their flaws, for one. It also helps that the characters are vastly sympathetic. Even when there was not much happening in this book, I was fully engaged because of the writing.
And, for me, Danny Ramadan is one of the best at that. This is the kind of literary fiction I like the most, the ones that feel more poetic than prose. Like in The Clothesline Swing, there’s a poetry to the writing of The Foghorn Echoes. Then we skip to the present, and the whole story spools out in reverse from there. The book opens with the catalyst: Hussam’s father catching Hussam and Wassim, as they finally act on their emotions towards each other. It’s a book I feel like I’ve been waiting forever for, but one that didn’t in any way disappoint once I started it. The Foghorn Echoes is a gorgeous book, as I knew it would be, after reading The Clothesline Swing. Rep: Syrian cast & setting, gay mcs, mc with PTSDĬWs: drug use, homophobia, controlling relationship, internalised homophobia, implied torture, rape/dubious consent, overdose Masterfully crafted and richly detailed, The Foghorn Echoes is a gripping novel about how to carve out home in the midst of war, and how to move forward when the war is within yourself. The past continues to reverberate through the present as Hussam and Wassim come face to face with heartache, history, drag queens, border guards, and ghosts both literal and figurative.
Taking shelter in a deserted villa, he unearths the previous owner's buried secrets while reckoning with his own. Wassim is living on the streets of Damascus, having abandoned a wife and child and a charade he could no longer keep up. Sponsored as a refugee by a controlling older man, Hussam is living an openly gay life in Vancouver, where he attempts to quiet his demons with sex, drugs, and alcohol. Ten years later, Hussam and Wassim are still struggling to find peace and belonging. In an instant, the course of their lives is changed forever. A blooming romance leads to a tragic accident when Hussam's father catches him acting on his feelings for his best friend, Wassim. A deeply moving novel about a forbidden love between two boys in war-torn Syria and the fallout that ripples through their adult lives.
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