A review by foggy_rosamund
Eight Months on Ghazzah Street by Hilary Mantel

3.0

Frances and her husband are British expats who meet in Botswana. After a few years of marriage, her husband Andrew gets a job in Jeddah, and the two move to Saudi Arabia. Andrew arrives first, and moves into a furnished apartment. Frances spends her days alone in this apartment while her husband works; she's a cartographer by profession, but she cannot work in Jeddah. Thirty years after publication, this book is interesting snapshot of Saudia Arabia at one moment in time, as well as a portrait of British expat culture. No one comes off well in this book: the British expats are shallow, racist and avaricious; the culture of Jeddah is also described as shallow, callous and cruel. This is my second Mantel novel, and I'm really surprised by how hollow her characters are here: in Beyond Black, she showed a deep understanding of her characters, but in this novel, even Frances is not well drawn. What does a cartographer do or feel passionate about? We never know. But that's not to say this book is without its merits: the prose is careful and evocative, the dialogue is believable, the story is gripping. One of the things that I found most interesting is the ways in which the male characters are shown as being completely incapable of understanding what the women are feeling: they don't seem to be able to see the restrictions placed on women, or any of the misogyny they face. They see cat-calling and harassment as simply an inconvenience. They also can't see ways in which women may want or need to express themselves, whether it's by exploring Islam or spending time alone. This was a subtly written and thought-provoking insight in a book that often felt directionless.