Vulture

Setting a novel amid the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a bold and risky endeavour, even more so if it’s your debut. Making the book a black comedy is even riskier. Is the reader willing or able to laugh at situations set amid a very real conflict that has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives?

In Phoebe Greenwood’s Vulture, journalist Sara Byrne is assigned to cover the 2012 conflict in Gaza. She stays at The Beach, a hotel that hosts all the international media, and has local minders who introduce her to key figures on the ground. She is still reeling from the end of an affair with a married man back in the UK and the recent death of her father, a respected scholar, and throws herself into her work.

Sara’s drive borders on self-obsession, more concerned with ‘getting the story’ than with the potential consequences of her methods. She blunders through war-torn Gaza, causing tension with local Palestinians, her minders, the fellow media contingent, and the newspaper she is writing for. She is a refreshingly flawed character and should appeal to fans of Fleabag who prefer their characters a bit messy.

While the book doesn’t shy away from the horrors of the war and the lives lost, the flashbacks to Sara’s chaotic pre-war life in London can’t help but seem trivial by comparison, even if they provide vital insight into Sara’s state of mind.

Greenwood worked as a correspondent in the Middle East, so she’s technically qualified to write about the region and the conflict. As such, Vulture offers insight (and a critique) into the media’s involvement, just not enough to balance the comedy. While the comedic elements lend the book the makings of a satirical wartime tale like Catch-22, they aren’t woven into a satisfying whole. There’s no moratorium on writing about this conflict, and although Greenwood should be commended for not playing it safe here, the book doesn’t quite reach the high standard set by other classics in the satirical wartime sub-genre.