I really enjoyed the beekeeper of Aleppo and was expecting quite a lot from this book. I’m not really sure that it delivered. The book is loaded with metaphor – the trapping of the migratory songbirds mirrored by the plight of, in this case, women forced by circumstances to leave their homelands to work at menial jobs, or worse, to support their own families. The setting is Cyprus and Nisha, Petra’s maid is from Sri Lanka. Cue parallels between two divided Islands. Both women are widows with young daughters however there could not be more difference in their response to their widowhood and their daughters. Yiannis, Nisha’s lover, previously a successful investment banker who lost his job, home and marriage in the financial crisis now traps the birds. From one morally- suspect role to another one might say. Descriptions of the bird trapping are horrifying, although I am aware that, as I will eat other birds without compunction, it is somewhat hypocritical on my part to condemn Yiannis. Equally horrifying are the descriptions of the conditions which the maids are forced to endure from their ‘sirs and madams’ - even those like Petra who would consider herself a good employer. And that is before you get into the servitude caused by the huge debt they must incur to get to a position in the first place. I did actually find the descriptions of the lives of the women, the awful attitudes towards them, the big business of bird trapping the most interesting parts of the book. I was less interested in what happened to Petra and Yiannis. Nisha goes missing at the beginning of the book and we don’t hear from her until the epilogue. Everything we know about her is filtered through Petra, Yiannis and her friends amongst the women. I found what had happened to her unconvincing although it’s difficult to explain how without spoiling, but the short chapters about the hare left no doubt where things were going. Many of the reviews say that this is a book which gives a voice to these migrant women but as far as I can see what it was really about was the transformation of Yannis and Petra. Once again, the ostensible subject of the story, seems just to be a mechanism to facilitate two white Europeans’ character development.