A review by nferre
Chicago by Alaa Al Aswany

2.0

This book started out with a bang. I told my husband I thought he would like it, I thought maybe I'd lend it to my son it was that good. I thought maybe it was my scatterbrain's fault that I didn't know who all the characters were from chapter to chapter. Maybe I should have started an index card cheat sheet to keep them all in order.I thought some of the characterizations were spot on, some of the observations of the Egyptians coming to the States were insightful. But by page 100, the book started falling apart with one cliched character after another. Blacks can't find work - ever, so they resort to work that contradicts their morals; health insurance (for a professor in a university) is so expensive it leaves no additional money for extras; couples of mixed race can't walk down a Chicago street without observing hateful looks, blatant racism against Egyptians in a post-doctoral or PhD setting in Chicago? In Aswayn's world women are weak in matters of the heart no matter how strong and intelligent they are in other areas.

By page 250 I was barely into the book. It seemed more like short stories very loosely tied together by a thread of Egypt, Chicago and histology - but never really meeting in a central place.

In the end, just unsatisfying. I really enjoyed The Yacubian Building a few years ago - but maybe this book just lacked sufficient insight into the topics the author dealt with that they fell flat, or perhaps it was stunted in the translation as the language came across as to make it anywhere past 2 stars for me.