Reviews

Ülearune naine by Rabih Alameddine, Ingrid Ruudi

margardenlady's review against another edition

challenging emotional reflective slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Aaliyah is our protagonist and we witness much of her life, told in fits and starts with inserting of many, many quotes and references to classical authors and their works. Alameddine is a truly well read scholar and a talented writer. He weaves characters and quotations and titles and writers in and out of Aaliyah's story.  I feel like I only caught a small percentage of the references, but what I did catch enhanced his prose. 

novabird's review against another edition

4.0

Alameddine uses an edgy almost cruel voice, gentled by brief yet deeply compassionate offerings, nuanced by everyday intimacies in, “An Unnecessary Woman,” and combined this delivers a complex and realistic tone. With truth, it lances, bleeds beauty and cleanses the wounds of reality.

Here are some examples of cruelty and beauty of Alameddine’s writing:

My mother was the young United Nations: leave your home, your brothers have suffered, you have other places you can go to, they don’t, get out.

During the war in Beirut, the powerful had money, but those with true power had water.

We lie down with hope and wake up with lies.

The peasantry, when it wishes to escape peasantry, has always, for centuries across all borders, escaped into a uniform.

I prefer slow conversations where words are counted like pearls, conversation with many pauses, pauses replacing words

In front of a building grows – no, not grows, stands – a hewn, rusty-hued bush of undecipherable leaves of which only a few remain greenish.

None of us know how to deal with the aleatory nature of pain.

When I read a book, I try my best, not always successfully, to let the wall crumble just a bit, the barricade that separates me from the book. I try to be involved.

The One God is a Nazi.

During these moments, I am healed of all wounds.

Israeli’s are Jews without humour.

Hannah wrote that her new sister-in-law “couldn’t understand stillness” – quite a wonderful phrase, if you ask me.

The ticktock tattooing of the march of time.

The ticktock of the tiny object full of gears suffocating all existence, wringing life out of life.

We postpone the unbreathable darkness that weighs us down.

Flashing a light on a dark corner can start a fire that scorches everything in its wake, including your own ever-so flammable soul.

The sun falls, as does the rain; winter nights arrive without warning.

Indoor winter winds interrogate my ankles.

My soul is fate’s chew toy.

This novel is grounded in landscape of the exterior of Beirut and in the interior of Aaliya. The former is marked by the physicality of reminders, which bring history to light. The latter is marked by a naturalistic narrative intrusion that says, “And where were we again, oh yes. ..” It is like reading a book while traveling that is so engrossing that the scenes that you are passing by become the images instantly imprinted on the page you are reading.

At first I was skeptical that Alameddine could carry a story told in part in the first person pov of a woman. He accomplishes this through his use of realism in his depiction of Aaliya that also disproves the adage

Spoiler

that old people can’t learn new things.

In doing so, he hurdles across two social conventions at once; gender and age with uncommon deftness.

Having read only a few of the books mentioned throughout the novel, I didn’t feel as though I lost out on any essential quality of the story. Instead I found a story in which I could involve myself. I readily recommend this to those who do not consider themselves full-fledged bibliophiles.

corkspork's review against another edition

emotional reflective sad slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

Generally enjoyed the book but I think I'd have enjoyed it more if I had a degree in literature. I had to abandon the idea of looking up things I'm unfamiliar with because there were so many novels, novelist, composers, etc mentioned that it would have taken me longer to do that than read the book itself. That came off as pretentious at times but it was fitting of the main character and I enjoyed the story as well as the history woven into it. 

sarahlou79's review against another edition

reflective medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

florencecwang's review against another edition

emotional reflective medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes

3.0

amgepine's review against another edition

dark emotional reflective slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No

3.5

jtisgreen's review against another edition

emotional inspiring reflective slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

jurga's review against another edition

emotional reflective

4.0

takumo_n's review against another edition

4.0

A Lebanese woman in her seventies dyes her hair blue, translate great works of literature into arabic from the french and english since she was in her twenties, sees how Beirut is changing. Reminisce about different wars throughout the twentieth century, about her only friend Hannah who killed herself, about her good for nothing impotent husband, about when she used to work in a library, about her abusive mother and stepfather and older stepbrother, about the time that stepbrother tried to bully her into leaving her deceased husband's aparment, because it was a bigger than his, about the time she exchange sex for an automatic rifle with the guy her parents wanted to force her to marry years ago. She talks about her favorite writers and poets, her process of translating. The fact that she doesn't want her senile mother living with her, but goes to visit and cleans her fungi ridden feet. Or when the apartment starts flooding and her neighbours, who she doesn't particularly likes, help her dry the pages of her translations out, and she has to admit that she's been doing this for fifty years just as a whim. And everything is so gripping and entertaining. The main character has a great sense of irony, and an interesting view of the world.

becann's review against another edition

dark reflective medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

This book is incredibly melancholy in a really impactful way. The stories told throughout leave blanks within the narrator’s story, but somehow it doesn’t feel incomplete 

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Suicide, Suicidal thoughts, and Suicide attempt