Reviews

Confusing, boring, and too convoluted, but somehow saved itself somewhere in the middle. I found myself drawn to one of the characters, Abdallah, and eventually grew a liking to Khalid as well - so I found it a shame he wasn’t featured as much.

The amount of characters and the jump from past to present so often is what weighs the book down. It feels like watching more of a show than following a steady plot, and there was no satisfying ending.

However, I do feel as though the translation fell flat and doesn’t do it justice - so I’m willing to read it in Arabic and hope that there’s a bit of a difference in quality.

mrucker's review against another edition

Go to review page

challenging emotional hopeful reflective sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

alaag's review against another edition

Go to review page

5.0

I have the privilege of reading this book in it's original Arabic and being Omani which makes this book extra special to me. This book is a whirlwind: both in emotions and structure.

If I had to summarize my feelings towards this book I would give it a heart emoji + a question mark.

Let's break it down:

The blurb:

The blurb slightly misleads you into assuming this is some love story between Maya and Ali Bin Khalaf. In fact, Ali never makes an appearance in this book and it's not just about Maya and her love interest, it's so much more. So, don't let the blurb stop you (as it did for me initially).

The structure:

Jokha Al Harthi does not believe in the orthodox timeline and structure of books. I would sell my left pinky to see her initial outlines and plannings of the books as I can't wrap my mind around how she created a comprehensive storyline while merging past, present, and the future into one.

There is a comprehensive storyline but instead of taking you traditionally from A to Z by going alphabetically, the book sort of goes from A to M to B to J to W etc and then arrives at a new letter which is not Z - but that's fine because that is perfect for this book.

THE CONTENT

This books is a national record. It contains our culture, our beliefs, our religion, our wars, our disagreements, our love, our loss, our grief, our hope, our ambitions. It contains our ugly and ignored history of slavery, it contains remnants of the war of 1957 in Jabal Al Akdhar, it contains love - both beautiful and tragic. It contains our life in the Capital, in the village, and in the desserts. It contains our people, our language, our life's structure. It's a national record, and more importantly, it's linguistically phenomenal.

This book is like a long sentence, like sprinting a marathon. The stories and paragraphs and chapters are not distinct from each other but distinctly blurred. The concept of time itself at some point is ignored. The ending is so open that as you finish the last page you look around you in your empty room and ask yourself "what just happened" but in a good way.

The Elephant in the Room :

Our society is a very conservative society. Sexual desire and intimacy are a natural, every day part of life for adults, and yet this book is highly criticized by many negatively due to the fact that it contains sexual content. This book is not sexually explicit or intentionally erotic - no! It just mentions sexual intimacy, a normalcy, as casually as it mentions food and sleep. It mentions it within married couples, within non-married couples, adulterous couples, and in sexually abusive and exploitive contents. It mentions it as it exists in our world. I have read books where the explicit sexual content was unnecessary, but Jokha Al Harthi didn't mention intercourse to upset people or to stimulate - she wrote it casually and normally. It's normal. It's life. That's what I got from her.

OVERALL :

This book is very important to me as an Omani. I know I will revisit this book again in the future and explore her other books. I hope that all Omanis give it an open-minded chance and I hope all non-Omanis enjoy it thoroughly and are welcome to a glimpse of our complicated lives and culture.