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aegagrus's reviews
72 reviews
The Moor's Account by Laila Lalami
3.0
Lalami is interested in the interplay between the rigidity of oppression and the fluidity of circumstance. Her narrator, Mustafa ibn Muhammad, is brought to the New World as the slave of a would-be conquistador. Mustafa retraces a sprawling odyssey which is both material and psychological, and along the way we are privy to the ways in which his enslavement morphs, dissipates, and stubbornly reasserts itself, over and over again. Mustafa is above all else a storyteller, and this is a story about stories: about thorny memories, powerful fantasies, and contested reports. At heart, Lalami’s themes are the stories we tell about oppression – and the ways in which those stories become real.
The Moor’s Account is engaging, often exciting, and always quite readable, and Mustafa is an extremely compelling narrator. The story we are being told suffers, though, when it comes to its setting. The majority of the book takes place in North America, but America is never rendered as convincingly as the scenes of Europe and Africa are. Similarly, while the Spanish and African characters are brimming with life and individuality, many of the Amerindian characters we meet are sketched in somewhat broad and generic strokes. To some extent, this results from the narrative structure: we only know what our protagonists know. Still, it often seems Lalami is not taking her setting seriously. America is a backdrop for the stories we are being told, but it is never given the space to breathe in its own right. To be sure, connections are drawn between Mustafa’s enslavement and the nascent dispossession and genocide of the native population, but these connections would be more interesting if the American aspects of the story did not feel so half-rendered. Unsurprisingly, the story drags somewhat in these sorts of settings, sometimes indulging in the tropes of survival narrative, or in gestures towards modern social issues which come across as a little on-the-nose.
While Lalami never fully captures the Americanness of her story, there is a lot to value here, from nuanced introspection to perilous adventure, and Lalami’s central theme receives a sensitive and thoughtful treatment.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal death, Confinement, Death, Gore, Physical abuse, Racism, Slavery, Violence, and Blood
Moderate: Adult/minor relationship, Genocide, Mental illness, Rape, Sexual assault, Torture, Medical content, Kidnapping, Grief, Cannibalism, and Religious bigotry
Minor: Homophobia and Infidelity
Aging Thoughtfully: Conversations about Retirement, Romance, Wrinkles, and Regret by Saul Levmore, Martha C. Nussbaum
3.75
Aging Thoughtfully is both academically substantial and emotionally sincere. Acknowledging their own experiences with age and aging, the authors are candid but not self-indulgent. Their project’s greatest strength is that it takes aging seriously both as a lived experience and as a social phenomenon. Nussbaum and Levmore see the interconnectedness of intimate narratives and socioeconomic policy, making their approach to aging rich and holistic. Their writing is clear and immediate, betraying deep intellectual curiosity and ambition. Their enthusiasm is evident. Their points of reference are eclectic, but not for the sake of being so.
Aging Thoughtfully is at its best when Nussbaum and Levmore are at odds not just methodologically but dispositionally. Strong disagreements surface only occasionally, but these are the moments when their writing really shines (for instance, over mandatory retirement laws or the culture of affluent retirement communities). Too often, though, the finished book doesn’t take as much advantage of its epistolary structure as it could have. Each chapter consists of two essays, the latter of which is intended to be a response to the former. Instead of truly responding to one-another, though, Nussbaum and Levmore typically treat the chapter’s broad theme as an individual prompt, only orthogonally gesturing towards one-another’s arguments. There’s nothing especially wrong with writing a book in this way. Still, given the compelling nature of their more direct engagements, it feels like a missed opportunity. The relative lack of a responsive structure also occasionally makes the essays slightly bloated and unwieldy – although if the book is being used as reference material, this problem is ameliorated by the inclusion of a useful and comprehensive index.
Aging Thoughtfully is not a perfect book, and requires some degree of patience, but it is also a deeply important and deeply rewarding read.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Body shaming, Confinement, Death, Medical content, Dementia, and Grief