"Too Soon is a multi-generational tale of ambition, war, and reinvention. Its fierce and witty narrators are women, grandmother, mother, and daughter, struggling to plot lives and destinies beyond history's confines. History here is nations at war; history is embattled families; history is expecting wives and daughters to put marriage before art and duty before desire. Arabella, the granddaughter, is a theatre director who stages Shakespeare's tragedies as if they were comedies and vice versa. This is exactly what Shamieh does in this book. Simplicities disappear. New interpretations and intricacies emerge. A writer outwits the confines of history." --Margo Jefferson, Pulitzer Prize-winning writer, author of Constructing a Nervous System
"Too Soon braids the lives of three passionate Palestinian women as they move through a turbulent century. From a sparkling harborside home in Jaffa in the forties, to the slums of Detroit in the sixties and the stages of contemporary New York theater, each generation must contend with patriarchy within her community and prejudice from outside it. A deft, honest novel that refuses to shun complexity as it explores the costs of love and motherhood." --Geraldine Brooks, Pulitzer Prize-winning author
"An unpredictable and expansive novel of history's intimate grip on the present. Three generations of Palestinian women fight for their lives, passions, and talents while facing exile, male power, and a corrupt art world. They each strategize survival in specific and recognizable ways, stretching the possible. Betty Shamieh's characters are real-to-life complex individuals who will keep readers surprised and moved. A book that expands the range of American fiction." --Sarah Schulman, author of Let the Record Show