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A review by thebobsphere
An Unnecessary Woman by Rabih Alameddine
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.