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aruarian_melody's review against another edition
The concept sounded really cool but I just didn't connect with this and decided to move on to something else. The literature references often felt like pretentious name-dropping rather than meaningful additions to the story. The jumping around made everything feel very disconnected.
phoebe912's review
challenging
emotional
funny
hopeful
informative
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.5
kathieboucher's review
4.0
A self-educated 70-something Beirut woman thinks about her life, cherishes her independence, and moves through the city she has loved through civil war and all kinds of other strife.
abilge's review
4.0
Bana kitaplardan ve sanattan anekdotlar veren kitapları çok seviyorum hele de baş kahramanı bir kadınsa… Aaliya bir çevirmen ve Beyrut’ta eşi kendisini terkedip bir kitapçıda çalışmaya başladığından beri kitaplar çeviriyor, yalnızlığını genellikle seviyor ve 72 yaşında bir feminist. Aaliya’nın 72 yıllık hayatını anlattığı bir günlük ve biyografi karışımı bu kitap politika, edebiyat, yaşlanma, yalnızlık, direnme ve daha bir çok şeyi anlatıyor. Zaman zaman kahramanın depresifliğinden bunalsam da çok etkileyici ve derinliği olan bir kitap Lüzumsuz Kadın.
annepw's review against another edition
4.0
Lovely. A book for the habitual reader, Aaliya a kindred spirit. One of those books whose charm comes from mood rather than plot.
As an aside, I'm impressed with Alameddine's female voice here. It's depressing how rarely male writers employ female protagonists, let alone an older woman in the first person. Alameddine's unqualified success in this area should serve as encouragement to other male writers.
As an aside, I'm impressed with Alameddine's female voice here. It's depressing how rarely male writers employ female protagonists, let alone an older woman in the first person. Alameddine's unqualified success in this area should serve as encouragement to other male writers.
asurges's review
5.0
A beautifully written (and sometimes funny) book told from the point of a view of a Lebanese woman who has lived alone for the past sixty-some years, translating a piece of literature annually. The book takes us through four days in her life, with her often switching in between the present and past and back to an in-between past, much like our own ruminations.
littletaiko's review
4.0
This was an unusual, somewhat challenging, and ultimately meaningful book to read, at least for me. Aaliya has survived through Beirut's civil war in part due to her love of literature. Books seem to be the way she has clung to her sanity as much as the rituals surrounding her work with books. This is very much about an older woman trying to come to grips with aging, loss of people, and learning to interact with others when it so much easier to just shut yourself off from the rest of the world. The literary references were great even if some went over my head.
ja3m3's review
I could not get into this book, so after trying for two weeks I am putting it aside.
thebobsphere's review against another edition
3.0
An Unnecessary Woman falls into those categories of books that I neither dislike or like, neither did I admire it. I felt neutral.
Aaliya is over 70 and lives in Beirut. Due to her age she has experienced the two civil wars in the 80’s and the scattered attacks over the years. Strangely enough she has bigger battles to fight.
The main one is typical Lebanese mentality. This affects her relationship with her mother, which is fractured because 1. She is a woman 2. She is divorced and 3. She was never really loved as a child. Despite this hatred towards Aaliya, her brother inlaw tries to foist the mother on her as she lives in an empty flat.
The other battles involve her neighbors, ex co-workers and her ex husband. She does have one best friend but she was a victim of Lebanese mentality as well. Like all battles there’s always some sort of casualty.
Aaliya does find solace in one thing and that’s books. She is an avid reader and tries to incorporate literature into her life. Due to tragic history of Lebanon, novels provide an escape or give her an opportunity to compare different cultures.
Towards the novel’s conclusion an event happens which makes Aaliya see things differently and that certain aspects of humanity may not be as bad as she thinks it is.
An Unnecessary Woman did not bore me, I liked the references to different books and everything is cleverly put together. My big qualm is the writing style : it’s pretentious, souless and overblown. At times i couldn’t help be irritated by certain words or sentence structures. The saving grace is the character of the main protagonist and her worldview. As someone who knows practically nothing about the Beirut conflicts this was an interesting take.
Is the book worth a read? definitely but I think it might have a Marmite affect on people.
Aaliya is over 70 and lives in Beirut. Due to her age she has experienced the two civil wars in the 80’s and the scattered attacks over the years. Strangely enough she has bigger battles to fight.
The main one is typical Lebanese mentality. This affects her relationship with her mother, which is fractured because 1. She is a woman 2. She is divorced and 3. She was never really loved as a child. Despite this hatred towards Aaliya, her brother inlaw tries to foist the mother on her as she lives in an empty flat.
The other battles involve her neighbors, ex co-workers and her ex husband. She does have one best friend but she was a victim of Lebanese mentality as well. Like all battles there’s always some sort of casualty.
Aaliya does find solace in one thing and that’s books. She is an avid reader and tries to incorporate literature into her life. Due to tragic history of Lebanon, novels provide an escape or give her an opportunity to compare different cultures.
Towards the novel’s conclusion an event happens which makes Aaliya see things differently and that certain aspects of humanity may not be as bad as she thinks it is.
An Unnecessary Woman did not bore me, I liked the references to different books and everything is cleverly put together. My big qualm is the writing style : it’s pretentious, souless and overblown. At times i couldn’t help be irritated by certain words or sentence structures. The saving grace is the character of the main protagonist and her worldview. As someone who knows practically nothing about the Beirut conflicts this was an interesting take.
Is the book worth a read? definitely but I think it might have a Marmite affect on people.
ajith's review
emotional
hopeful
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
4.5
The history, the culture, the cuisine, the cataclysm defying spirit, the intellectuals, Gibran, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Rawi Hage - everytime I identify one or the other from Lebanon I find myself stupefied. Predictably so, Rabih Alameddine has also joined that enchanters list, albeit in my second encounter with him.
Only a few pages in, you would figure out the title is misleading for the seventy-odd Aaliya Saleh is on her own, independant and recluse by choice but is also a bibliophile, a melophile , an aesthete in the Beirut of 2010. She indulges herself in doing translations, translations of translations to be precise, of famous works to Arabic.The book is replete with references to writers - Sebald, Nabakov, Proust , Walter Benjamin, Dostoevsky, Pessoa, Edward Hirsch, Marguerite Yourcenar, Danilo Kis and many others, some of whose names has put the unversed me to shame - and their respective oeuvres.
Segued into the side tracks of literature, art and music Aaliya's septuagenarian thoughts deftly meanders unveiling her own life and her solitude. The three witches - Fadia, Joumana, and Marie -Therese - Ahmad, Aaliya's mother and Hannah are a few of the other characters who assist in driving the plot.
Rabih is a masterclass who is in full control of his language - post modern, free flowing and majestic - in this almost-a-300-pager with no chapter breaks.
A reader's delight and an intelligent read about solitude, old age and Beirut.