Living in Raqqa in 2013, the Wassef family is already struggling: father Jorem is a doctor at the national hospital, but isn’t immune to harassment by the Assad government; and son Tarek is actively involved with revolutionaries trying to bring that government down. Once Assad’s forces are driven from Raqqa, mother Nooda and daughter Layal find themselves in far worse circumstances, subject to the violent, patriarchal fundamentalism of the Islamic State.

Touching on subject matter still under-discussed in English literature, Kim Dempster’s THE COLOR OF MOURNING’s greatest success is in humanizing the complex crises of the Syrian Civil War. In a clear, wrenching moment near the start of the text, the point is driven home as a few teens congregate in Raqqa: “They could be any young people in any city in 2013.” Nooda is a journalist for the AP, and Layal is hoping to attend school in London. Details like these cut through the news media stereotypes of robed foreigners in dusty, ruined vistas, and make the characters tangible. Their shock, confusion, fear, and resolve are equally tangible; secular repression is traded for religious repression, and their mostly modern lives are disassembled by ideologues.

The prose is quick and straightforward, peppered with moments of beauty—as in one tense scene, where Nooda and an Islamic State official “drink tea from small glasses shaped like the bloom of a tulip”—or visceral surprise, as when triumphant machine-gun fire is described as “a rhythmical popping sound, the pulse of revolution.” The text does have a few small but consistent grammatical issues (most notably, missing commas in appositives: “He loves her Mother” instead of “He loves her, Mother”). However, these flaws don’t detract from clarity or vision.

THE COLOR OF MOURNING is a debut novel, and it does feel that the storytelling could use a bit more polish. There may be a reticence to stray too far from the real-life stories that inspired it, but the narrative misses some important opportunities to develop character and theme. Layal, for instance, suffers a troubled marriage to a smart, seemingly sympathetic Islamic State commander, but the arc unfolds at an uncomfortable, grinding middle-pace: he doesn’t switch abruptly and shockingly from hot to cold upon their marriage, but nor is there a slow, creeping dread as his true character reveals itself. Either option would be more narratively satisfying and more compelling to read. Some entire episodes are also misplaced or underutilized: an encounter with an all-female force of Kurdish freedom fighters goes by in the blink of an eye, despite ample resources for more development of character and theme (especially as this group contrasts with the Islamic State’s all-female morality police, the Al-Khansaa Brigade). These aren’t outright errors, but they are missed opportunities to make the text stronger, more interesting, and more impactful.

THE COLOR OF MOURNING nonetheless succeeds in telling a straightforward and gripping story about repression, survival, and freedom.

Kim Dempster’s THE COLOR OF MOURNING tells a compelling and necessary tale of encroaching authoritarianism.

~Dan Accardi for IndieReader