A review by thejoyofbooking
Untold Story by Monica Ali
4.0
I had been looking forward to reading this book for a long time, and I finally got to sit down with it while traveling for work - between meetings and in the early morning hours (thanks, jet lag!) by the hotel pool. It's a great book for reading that way - while traveling or on vacation.
I was at first disappointed by the rather flat, stock-character aspect of most of "Lydia's" friends - like the yoga friend who *always* sits in full lotus, every time she sits down. (Seriously. Who does that?). But in the end, while their characters didn't develop at all, some of the others developed enough to make up for it.
Monica Ali uses a few different voices to tell the story - a third party narration of both Lydia and the paparazzi who is unwittingly about to stumble upon her story, and a first person diary-style narration by Lydia's trusted assistant, the person who helped her escape from her claustrophobic life. The pieces come together in a surprising climax, which ended with enough tidiness to keep me happy and enough left to the imagination to keep me from rolling my eyes.
This would be a lovely book club discussion, not just for the story but for what it says about how we view celebrity, what it would take to abandon one's life, and the importance of trust, friendship, and self-reliance.
I was at first disappointed by the rather flat, stock-character aspect of most of "Lydia's" friends - like the yoga friend who *always* sits in full lotus, every time she sits down. (Seriously. Who does that?). But in the end, while their characters didn't develop at all, some of the others developed enough to make up for it.
Monica Ali uses a few different voices to tell the story - a third party narration of both Lydia and the paparazzi who is unwittingly about to stumble upon her story, and a first person diary-style narration by Lydia's trusted assistant, the person who helped her escape from her claustrophobic life. The pieces come together in a surprising climax, which ended with enough tidiness to keep me happy and enough left to the imagination to keep me from rolling my eyes.
This would be a lovely book club discussion, not just for the story but for what it says about how we view celebrity, what it would take to abandon one's life, and the importance of trust, friendship, and self-reliance.