Rabih Alameddine

Read Around the World Challenge: Lebanon

“We, like most humans, consider history a lesson on a blackboard that can be sponged off.”

The author, Rabih Alameddine was born in Jordan to Lebanese parents, and grew up in Kuwait and Lebanon. An Unnecessary Woman is a beautifully-written, award-winning literary fiction about Aaliya, an elderly woman, a book-loving recluse, living in Beirut. Through her somewhat irreverent and cynical eyes we see Beirut from the 1950s to the 2000s.

For the first half of the book I was enthralled by the glorious writing. The second half of the book lost my attention as there is very little plot, and the constant references to different works of literature became irksome.

This was a stunning book with lots of beautiful lines, but could have been at least one hundred pages shorter. Some of my favourite quotes are:

“No loss is felt more keenly than the loss of what might have been. No nostalgia hurts as much as nostalgia for things that never existed.”

“I long ago abandoned myself to a blind lust for the written word. Literature is my sandbox. In it I play, build my forts and castles, spend glorious time.”

“Memory chooses to preserve what desire cannot hope to sustain.”

“We rarely consider that we're also formed by the decisions we didn't make, by events that could have happened but didn't, or by our lack of choices, for that matter.”

“There is none more conformist than one who flaunts his individuality.”

“you can tell how well a marriage is working by counting the bite marks on each partner’s tongue.”

“Mine is a face that would have trouble launching a canoe.”

“Forced learning and magic are congenital adversaries”

“The receding perspective of my past smothers my present. Remembering is the malignancy that feeds on my now.”… (mer)

This is one of those delightful books that makes you stop and want to write down bits of it in order to remember the words forever. The cover reviewer is correct - this book does break your heart - so beware.
The main character is a so-called "unnecessary woman", living in Lebanon during the civil war. No one seems to want or need her, even her husband. She spends her life translating writers, storing up boxes of gradually bettering translations of the classics and new writers into Arabic.
I loved this complaining, grumbly women. She's 72, but I can identify with her feelings of invisibility and her need for something significant to hang onto. I traveled through this book, gradually coming to dread the end - both because I thought it would end one way (it doesn't) and because I feel I've lost the kind of person I would have loved to have spent afternoons with, discussing literature.
The true pleasure in this book are the selected words of other writers and her wise, cheeky, worldly interpretation of them.
Highly highly recommended. I found myself smiling throughout and weeping near the end. Truly a read to wallow in.
… (mer)

The story narrates the travels of Lebanese doctor Mina Simpson to the notorious Moria refugee camp in Lesbos, Greece, after receiving an urgent call for assistance from her friend who manages an NGO there. As a Trans woman, Mina has avoided going so near to her birthplace for decades because she is estranged from her family, with the exception of her loving brother Mazen. However, Mina intends to do something significant during her week off work and without her wife of thirty years, amidst the hordes of Western volunteers who take photos with beached dinghies and the camp's kids.

Sumaiya, a very defiant Syrian matriarch who has terminal liver cancer, is soon transported across by boat. Sumaiya refuses to tell her family about her diagnosis since she is adamant about protecting her kids and spouse at any costs. Sumaiya's secret brings her together with Mina, who plans a course of therapy with the few resources at her disposal, she must face the circumstances that led to the migrants' displacement as well as her own limitations in being able to assist them.

Told through a compilation of short vignettes, I found this novel a touching and emotionally uplifting story of a trans woman's success in difficult situations. What comes through is the warmth and humanity of the heroine and her modern odyssey in theLevant.… (mer)