Harley Loco - Rayya Elias - Day 1/2

From one dysfunctional author to another, Ryya Elias writing has a less writerly, more amateur feel to it, but she tells the story well, and her voice comes through.  Her background is, in the words of a less wordly connected world, exotic - family origins in Turkey which her family fled in 1915 ahead of the pogrom, then Syria and the flight from ethnic/religious conflict to the USA. She has more horror in her life than the poor old cold existentially angsted Norwegian Karl Ove Knausgaard, but also a lot of fun and, I don't know, more life in her. As ever it's always comforting to read about people who are more fucked up than you, and to find out that they turn out OK. (Whether that's the case with Karl Ove I don't know yet - there are four more books in his "My Struggle" series that haven't been translated into english yet).