As the book starts all the couples; Izzy and James, Harriet and Wills and Stella and Jonny are all settled in life. Caroline, James' sister is single and feels on the edge of the group due to her status. The story unfolds and we see that none of the couples are quite as secure as first impressions suggested and secrets and lies test their relationships. Told in chapters covering the key times when the group are bought together such as New Year's Eve the reader is left with gaps, this device moves the story along nicely without becoming bogged down with the minutiae of daily life. The heart is a different animal. A caged, lonely scavenger that feeds on its own wounds. Its scars never heal, because you can’t mend the very thing it needs to survive. So the wound continues to fester, until what’s left of the organ is eventually consumed by its own self-mutilation.” ― Keri Lake, Master of Salt & Bones Schami's prose is simple and his outlook avowedly realist: beyond the occasional dream, he squeezes the whims of fate and fantasy from life itself. This realism makes 'The Dark Side Of Love' deeply affecting: haunting, heart-breaking and undeniably pertinent given the tragedy centred on Schami's beloved city today. This is why relationships require compromise. You’re not going to love everything about the person you are with, but you love enough about him or her to live with the things you don’t love. Not all people are willing to, or even able to, compromise. That is why sometimes it just doesn’t work out, regardless of what our emotions tell us. When I say I love you more Steven, our bachelor is looking for a wife and he is not really in the picture like the brothers but his role becomes very important later. When Julian goes home to prepare for the funeral, Steve surprisingly appears at his home with the excuse that Julian should not have to face the ordeal alone. What is so interesting here is that Steven maintains that he is straight and the he and Julian actually only met several days before. There is another character, Chanel (Raquel Rossner), Michael's girlfriend who comes along with Michael when he goes home to bury his mother.

Really enjoyed it, not quite as much as the previous two- (Luxury will always be my favourite, I just adored the glamour and insane wealth and indeed 'luxury'.) As love is as intense an emotion as one gets, it occasionally leads us to make poor choices – choices that are hurtful to the ones we love. Romeo and Juliet meets Arturo Pérez-Reverte and John le Carré in the dusty streets of Damascus… A rewarding and beautifully written, if blood-soaked, tale.’ I will not have you without the darkness that hides within you. I will not let you have me without the madness that makes me. If our demons cannot dance, neither can we.” ― Nikita GillY otras que o no me han gustado o me han aburrido. Se me ha hecho larguísimo el dificultoso amor de Rana y Farid, su estancia en la prisión, sus reuniones de partido... Y algunos personajes se me han atravesado, y no me refiero a los malos oficiales (como la familia de Rana), sino a los que se suponen "positivos" como Claire, que al principio me pareció interesante y luego se fue desdibujando hasta convertirse en una madre sufridora sin más... Two strangers gallop into the remote, mountain village of Mala in 1907, fugitives from a brutal arranged marriage, and inadvertently begin a feud between the Mushtak and Shahin clans which will spill the blood of generations to come. Some seventy years later in Damascus, the teenaged Farid Mushtak will meet and fall in love with a girl whom fate cruelly dictates is a Shahin. Their choice is stark: to deny their passion, or face death. So, that was it for our topic of The Dark Side Of Love. It’s not a nice feeling when you can’t be with someone you love, but if you are ready to put in an honest effort in your relationship, you can make it work. While at the beginning, I had some trouble getting into the story of the family feud between two Christian families in Syria which began at the end of the 19th century and keeps influencing generation after generation, the book and its characters started to grow on me after having ploughed through the first third of the novel. While I found the repetitiveness of violence and forbidden love a little bit tiring at first, it became one topic of many in the course of the book. I truly enjoy the Oriental way of telling a story - the narrator kind of meanders through urban Damascus and rural Mala, stopping here and there without obvious reason, thus creating a vivid image of the city, the country and its history. I've found this novel in a series dedicated to world's cities, and Damascus is definitely the hidden protagonist of the book. The prose is beautiful and evocative, and makes one smell the odours of the city, hear the chatter of the women and the noise of the children playing in the streets and the sheer vastness of the novel with its dozens of characters and sidelines reminds me of the labyrinth of Oriental medinas - definitely a book which makes one long for a journey to its settings. Others have been right to question Schami's choice of title for his book, for this is not simply about love's 'dark side', but about love in all its glory - the kind of love that conquers all, even death.

It is important to note that financial abuse is a form of domestic violence and can have serious consequences for both the victim and the abuser. Victims of financial abuse may suffer from anxiety, depression, and other mental health issues as a result of the abuse. They may also struggle to rebuild their financial independence and regain control over their lives.Embracing a breathtaking array of characters, but managing to retain a clarity characteristic of so much translated Arabic fiction, Schami proceeds to fill in the gap of those three-score years, revealing why Farid and Rana's nascent love is doomed. For the controller, financial abuse can lead to legal and financial consequences. In some cases, financial abuse can be considered a form of domestic violence and can lead to criminal charges. Additionally, financial abuse can impact their credit rating and financial future, especially if they have accumulated debt or engaged in fraudulent behaviour. Im Grunde genommen handelt die Geschichte von einer verbotenen Liebe zwischen Rana und Farid, die zwei verfeindeten Sippen angehören. Aber die Geschichte ist viel mehr als das! Unfortunately, we live in a world governed by rationality, and while love may be irrational, and we may manage to make it work some of the time, the real world always catches up with us and our irrational illusions dissipate into thin air. Then we are left with reality and reality doesn’t always reason the way lovers do.

But Detective Barudi is not content to let this mystery disappear. Alone, he begins to unravel a clan war that has dominated the lives of three generations. The synopsis shows the reader that eventually a crime will take place but you have no idea with which character, and to be frank, as I read further into the book it could have been any of them! We see adultery, drug use, domestic abuse and the general hard work it takes to make life work. I found myself more and more embroiled in the story and eventually read the last quarter of it in one sitting. Financial abuse occurs when one partner in a relationship controls the other's finances or uses money to control their behaviour. This can take many forms, including withholding money, stealing money, coercing their partner into signing financial documents, and even sabotaging their partner's career. Throughout the narrative we get glimpses of a hostage situation, but it's not until the climax that we find out who is the gunman and who is the hostage. This is the perfect book to get lost in, well written with a good mixture of characters and with a bit of a twist in the tail. Jessica Rushton's next book The Lies You Told Me is even better, clearly an author to watch.Above St Paul’s Chapel, a body hangs in a basket over the city wall. The corpse is Major Mahdi Said, a high-ranking Muslim officer, and the secret service is soon involved. Compromising, of course, is a choice. You either choose to make it work or you choose not to. I believe this fully. As long as something doesn’t go against your core values, you can try to go along with it. But there are still some cases when compromising isn’t enough. 2. Letting Go The Dark Side Of Love: Your inability to forgive is why you can’t be with someone you love The Darker Side of Love spans the years from late 2007 to 2010 telling the tale of a group of middle-classed friends dealing with life. As the title suggests this isn't a cosy story of how love can conquer all but rather how love can be dangerous when offered to the wrong person. A number of serious issues are covered in the book including, domestic abuse, grief, substance abuse and adultery to name a few. The late 'noughties'. A global recession looms. A group of old friends, all leading outwardly successful, interesting lives. All in apparently loving, secure relationships. Yet all, in some way, lying to those closest to them, concealing secret worries, jealousies, desires. This group of friends is about to discover that the truth won't stay buried for ever... This story introduces us to four women who are firm friends. Caroline, Stella, Izzy and Harriet and their partners/husbands are the focus of this story starting in the nineties. Initially, it can seem a little overwhelming with the amount of characters that appear very early on. However, when you begin to understand each of their lives it becomes easier to distinguish between these very different characters.

Vor rund 20 Jahren habe ich gerne und viel Schami gelesen, damals war ich noch ein unerfahrener Leser und diese Geschichten, die wie Wasserfälle dahinplätschern haben mich fasziniert. Irgendwann nervte mich aber, dass die Kernhandlung hinter Arabesken verschwand. Nun lange Jahre später also ein weiteres Werk von Schami, das allerdings seinem Umfang nach alle anderen sprengt. Dennoch bleibt hier Schami seine Stärken und Schwächen treu. For me the main theme was finding oneself - who you are, what you want, and what you're willing to put up with to get there. You wait in hopes that new love can take the place of the old — which it can. But that doesn’t mean you will ever stop loving each other. Some people will love each other until the day they die, spending the majority of their lives apart. And this is the darker side of love that you need to know about. What Does The Dark Side Of Love Teach You? The dark side of love teaches you the value of compromise and forgiveness. Your relationship requires work, your relationship requires effort. It’s not always kisses and chocolates, if you want to be blessed with true love, brace yourself for the dark side of love too. A woman once loved a man with a large wart on his nose. She thought him the most handsome man in the world. Years later, however, she noticed the wart one morning. 'How long have you had that wart on your nose?' she asked. 'Ever since you stopped loving me,' said the man sadly."

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Like some other reviewers I was expecting to read descriptions of Damascus and other parts of Syria that would give a true feeling of the area and that was one of the reasons that I got the book. There didn't appear to be much of this, there was hardly anything to describe or give character to the areas it was set in. Somewhere towards the end I remember the author mentioning the story as a mosaic, and I think that's the perfect way to describe this novel. I also think it's the ideal way to show readers an image of life in an Arab country: each piece is a little fragment of the whole, on its own may not make much sense, but its still beautiful, and will be laid down, and little by little the image will build up in your head, until you see the whole picture. For the victim, financial abuse can lead to a loss of financial independence and control, which can negatively impact their self-esteem and confidence. Victims of financial abuse may feel trapped and helpless, as they may not have access to funds to leave the relationship or support themselves. This can lead to feelings of anxiety, depression, and other mental health issues. The two may love each other fully because remember, love isn’t rational, yet not be able to live and deal with each other forever.