Intolerable by  Kamal Al-Solaylee

The Canada Reads showdown is starting soon, here is another review, my obvious favorite so far.

It was refreshing to be invited along on a journey through a life instead of being an audience to a lecture on life.  Through the authors eyes a gay male in a increasingly strict religious society I was witness to this societal change of ideal and how devastating it can be to a persons identity, permanently scarring the soul.  The author who’s facing his own challenges, being gay and finding where he fits in the world is a perfect narrator of this story.  A story that needs to be told from a person seen as an outsider of his own culture, he knows how the rest of his adopted Canadian culture sees the conflicts and he expresses this throughout the novel, as he distances himself from his family whose ideologies are changing and are becoming foreign to him.  This story can be applied to many cultures and times through history when the young have moved away from home or homeland to set up a new life elsewhere either because of conflict or change of view.    If we look into the past of our own country or family, this idea is repeated over and over.  We can see it in the aboriginal history in Canada, and the immigrant experience.  Thank you Kamal Al-Solaylee.