yellow_library's review against another edition
emotional
hopeful
informative
lighthearted
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.25
bekkajmills's review against another edition
3.0
This book was alright. I kept expecting something REALLY interesting to happen, but it never did. I guess that's my American mentality at work, though. This book is about the lives of 4 Saudi women and their search for happiness and love. It was interesting because I learned a lot about the Saudi culture, but I think I probably could have gotten that same information off of a Wikipedia page.
hanzy's review
3.0
I've had a hard time reading this book without being judgemental. The writer does shed light on some idiocracies that exist in the society but of course, like every controversial book, it doesn't portray the entire picture. I liked the many poetical lines she's used and the writing style, with the narrator taking a sort've gossip girl's position and spilling all the beans through emails. However, these emails do present a certain perspective and certain realities that are often overlooked so it isn't entirely superficial and that's what led me to actually complete the book.
lpm100's review against another edition
funny
informative
lighthearted
fast-paced
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
4.0
Book Review
Girls of Riyadh
4/5 stars
"A characterization of Saudi Society in 27 quotes"
*******
I thought I would pick this book up because I'd never before read a characterization of everyday Saudi/Arab society.
This is a story of four upper class women in Saudi Arabia - - and it may not be representative of even a large fraction of people, but it is (somewhat) interesting nonetheless.
The book was 51 chapters over 281 pages. 5~6 pages per chapter, and it could probably have been 50 pages shorter with no loss.
I will skip all of the character/plot analysis - - firstly because I'm probably not qualified to do character analysis (I only read a handful of fiction books per year) and secondly because the machinations of the plot are too complicated for anybody to keep track of.
The most valuable part of the book is that it gives us an idea of what some fraction of Saudi life is like - - although I suspect that this is probably not true for the vast majority of working squares.
It is only wealthy people who have enough time to find things like these to torture themselves with; "Those who toil from sunup to sundown for the barest of necessities dream no dreams and nurse no grievances."
The quotes that stand out the most are the ones that give me a sense of the Arabs, and maybe they could do the same for another potential reader:
1. The sheikh says "fingerprint, not signature." The men are the only ones who sign their names.
2. The list of contraband items was long and included: photo albums, diaried, perfume bottles, romantic novels, music cassettes, and videotapes.
3. Our Saudi Society resembles a fruit cocktail of social classes and which no classes mixes with another and less absolutely necessary, and then only with the help of a blender.
4. The photo finally mixing with the opposite sex was a grand dream for many, many students - - guys and girls alike. Some join these colleges primarily for that reason, even if the mixing that they anticipated so eagerly was heavily restricted.
5. From Beirut, she would bring books on the signs of the zodiac.
6. That was before the religious police banned anything that might remotely suggest a celebration of the holiday of love, St Valentine's day, as in Islam there are only two holidays.
7. Saudis started celebrating Valentine's Day in the late 90s after they heard about it through satellite TV channels broadcast from Lebanon and egypt.
8.....to study psychology under The guiding hand of Sigmund Freud, aided by the books that she had brought with her.
9. If all else fails, pregnancy was the only way to ensure that a marriage continues. Notice that I say "continues" and not "succeeds."
10. The slap landed on her right cheek, and the sound of it echoed in her head..... The second slap came and she failed to the floor, sobbing painfully. -->(This guy was smacking his wife because she insulted his Japanese girlfriend.)
11. So, like countless mothers before her, she resorted to the oldest trick in the book: "Quick, son! Get up, hurry, get me my blood pressure medicine! My heart, oh my heart! I think I'm dying."
12. Among the different subclassifications of Saudi society, there are the tribals and the non-tribals. Between these two classes there can be no marriages. A tribal family is one that can be traced to one of the well-known Arabic tribes.
13. "Gd burn your heart to ashes and the heart of your mother, too, Rashid, like you've burned up my heart over my little girl." -->(this is not the first book I have read where it has shown the Arabs as *extremely* theatrical.)
14. Everyone considers me a bad girl just because my mother is American!
15. In general, everyone understood that Saudi girls were more at ease mixing with men who were not Saudi.
16. .... And more important if he hadn't been Shiite, she might actually have fallen in love with him.
17. She tried tender motherly persuasion and she tried firm motherly thrashing, but nothing worked...... The father heard things by way of the neighbors, though, and what he heard put him into a fury. Bursting into Nuri's room one day, he began to pummel and kick his son. The boy suffered fractures in the rib cage and a broken nose and arm. Following the incident, the father left the household to move in entirely with his second wife, permanently distancing himself from this house and this faggot boy who was such a freak of nature.
18. Or will we disguise Saudi boys to take on the roles of young women, and thereby lose the audience?
19. Gamrah began to tremble when she heard The sheik's interpretation of her dream.
20. "Now as you know very well I'm a Bedouin and a soldier, and I ain't interested in makin' clever little chit chat with you fancy city folk. I heard your niece has a little boy from her first husband. So the fine print as I see it is, the boy stays here with his grandmother. To clarify, here, I am not gonna raise a kid who is in my own, he is not welcome in my house."
21. "Aquarius men are really awful, they're snobbish and they think they're always cool. And the worst part is, some Libra girls make it easy for them!"
23. But Jumana was in love with one of her relatives who she intended to marry as soon as he finished his MA in England and returned home. --> (Cousin marriages range between 10 and 67% in the Middle East.)
24. Saleh was happy to come, and would throw on his miniature black woman's abaya, which Gamrah had cut and hemmed to his size after he demanded that she buy him one exactly like hers.
25. .... having earlier agreed with her three friends that she would try to throw the wedding bouquet in their direction...... After a lot of pushing and shoving and kicking and hitting, Gamrah got hold of what was left of Lamee's bouquet.
26. ..... he would take her out to a restaurant or shopping without the slightest anxiety or embarrassment about the possibility of running into one of his friends while his wife was at his side (a hang up many Saudi men have).
27. .... Tariq had not forgotten to bring her the Burger King double Whopper meal she liked.
Other good quotes:
1. He who grows up doing something grows old doing it. (Arabic proverb.)
2. They make mountains out of mole hills, or, as we say, a dome out of a seed. (Arabic proverb.)
3. Marriage was like the watermelon on the knife, you never knew what you were going to get. (Arabic proverb.)
4. "Don't wake up a woman in love. Let her dream, so that she does not weep when she returns to bitter reality." (Mark Twain)
5. "Nothing is harder than the life of a woman who finds herself torn between a man who loves her and a man she loves." (Gibran)
6. "Those who want us, our souls resent them; and those whom we want, fate refuses to give to us." (Female Saudi poet.)
Verdict: recommended at the price of about $3.
Girls of Riyadh
4/5 stars
"A characterization of Saudi Society in 27 quotes"
*******
I thought I would pick this book up because I'd never before read a characterization of everyday Saudi/Arab society.
This is a story of four upper class women in Saudi Arabia - - and it may not be representative of even a large fraction of people, but it is (somewhat) interesting nonetheless.
The book was 51 chapters over 281 pages. 5~6 pages per chapter, and it could probably have been 50 pages shorter with no loss.
I will skip all of the character/plot analysis - - firstly because I'm probably not qualified to do character analysis (I only read a handful of fiction books per year) and secondly because the machinations of the plot are too complicated for anybody to keep track of.
The most valuable part of the book is that it gives us an idea of what some fraction of Saudi life is like - - although I suspect that this is probably not true for the vast majority of working squares.
It is only wealthy people who have enough time to find things like these to torture themselves with; "Those who toil from sunup to sundown for the barest of necessities dream no dreams and nurse no grievances."
The quotes that stand out the most are the ones that give me a sense of the Arabs, and maybe they could do the same for another potential reader:
1. The sheikh says "fingerprint, not signature." The men are the only ones who sign their names.
2. The list of contraband items was long and included: photo albums, diaried, perfume bottles, romantic novels, music cassettes, and videotapes.
3. Our Saudi Society resembles a fruit cocktail of social classes and which no classes mixes with another and less absolutely necessary, and then only with the help of a blender.
4. The photo finally mixing with the opposite sex was a grand dream for many, many students - - guys and girls alike. Some join these colleges primarily for that reason, even if the mixing that they anticipated so eagerly was heavily restricted.
5. From Beirut, she would bring books on the signs of the zodiac.
6. That was before the religious police banned anything that might remotely suggest a celebration of the holiday of love, St Valentine's day, as in Islam there are only two holidays.
7. Saudis started celebrating Valentine's Day in the late 90s after they heard about it through satellite TV channels broadcast from Lebanon and egypt.
8.....to study psychology under The guiding hand of Sigmund Freud, aided by the books that she had brought with her.
9. If all else fails, pregnancy was the only way to ensure that a marriage continues. Notice that I say "continues" and not "succeeds."
10. The slap landed on her right cheek, and the sound of it echoed in her head..... The second slap came and she failed to the floor, sobbing painfully. -->(This guy was smacking his wife because she insulted his Japanese girlfriend.)
11. So, like countless mothers before her, she resorted to the oldest trick in the book: "Quick, son! Get up, hurry, get me my blood pressure medicine! My heart, oh my heart! I think I'm dying."
12. Among the different subclassifications of Saudi society, there are the tribals and the non-tribals. Between these two classes there can be no marriages. A tribal family is one that can be traced to one of the well-known Arabic tribes.
13. "Gd burn your heart to ashes and the heart of your mother, too, Rashid, like you've burned up my heart over my little girl." -->(this is not the first book I have read where it has shown the Arabs as *extremely* theatrical.)
14. Everyone considers me a bad girl just because my mother is American!
15. In general, everyone understood that Saudi girls were more at ease mixing with men who were not Saudi.
16. .... And more important if he hadn't been Shiite, she might actually have fallen in love with him.
17. She tried tender motherly persuasion and she tried firm motherly thrashing, but nothing worked...... The father heard things by way of the neighbors, though, and what he heard put him into a fury. Bursting into Nuri's room one day, he began to pummel and kick his son. The boy suffered fractures in the rib cage and a broken nose and arm. Following the incident, the father left the household to move in entirely with his second wife, permanently distancing himself from this house and this faggot boy who was such a freak of nature.
18. Or will we disguise Saudi boys to take on the roles of young women, and thereby lose the audience?
19. Gamrah began to tremble when she heard The sheik's interpretation of her dream.
20. "Now as you know very well I'm a Bedouin and a soldier, and I ain't interested in makin' clever little chit chat with you fancy city folk. I heard your niece has a little boy from her first husband. So the fine print as I see it is, the boy stays here with his grandmother. To clarify, here, I am not gonna raise a kid who is in my own, he is not welcome in my house."
21. "Aquarius men are really awful, they're snobbish and they think they're always cool. And the worst part is, some Libra girls make it easy for them!"
23. But Jumana was in love with one of her relatives who she intended to marry as soon as he finished his MA in England and returned home. --> (Cousin marriages range between 10 and 67% in the Middle East.)
24. Saleh was happy to come, and would throw on his miniature black woman's abaya, which Gamrah had cut and hemmed to his size after he demanded that she buy him one exactly like hers.
25. .... having earlier agreed with her three friends that she would try to throw the wedding bouquet in their direction...... After a lot of pushing and shoving and kicking and hitting, Gamrah got hold of what was left of Lamee's bouquet.
26. ..... he would take her out to a restaurant or shopping without the slightest anxiety or embarrassment about the possibility of running into one of his friends while his wife was at his side (a hang up many Saudi men have).
27. .... Tariq had not forgotten to bring her the Burger King double Whopper meal she liked.
Other good quotes:
1. He who grows up doing something grows old doing it. (Arabic proverb.)
2. They make mountains out of mole hills, or, as we say, a dome out of a seed. (Arabic proverb.)
3. Marriage was like the watermelon on the knife, you never knew what you were going to get. (Arabic proverb.)
4. "Don't wake up a woman in love. Let her dream, so that she does not weep when she returns to bitter reality." (Mark Twain)
5. "Nothing is harder than the life of a woman who finds herself torn between a man who loves her and a man she loves." (Gibran)
6. "Those who want us, our souls resent them; and those whom we want, fate refuses to give to us." (Female Saudi poet.)
Verdict: recommended at the price of about $3.
dominicangirl's review against another edition
emotional
funny
lighthearted
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.25
leavingsealevel's review against another edition
3.0
Ha, joke's on me for glancing at all the blurbs promising Cultural Enlightenment and thinking this book would be 10000x more serious than it is. Still, this was fun. And, ok, very different in some ways from most mainstream US/UK chick lit.
kawthar114's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
funny
hopeful
inspiring
lighthearted
relaxing
sad
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
megprescott's review against another edition
funny
lighthearted
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
txfarmmom's review against another edition
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.5