I mentioned at work recently that I would be reading this book for my real life book club; the reason I brought it up to someone specific is two-fold: The surgeon I was talking to is Lebanese (actually, a few in the office are) and I wondered if he had heard of it, and also because the author and this surgeon share the same first name. (He wasn't as impressed by that fact as I was, but that's not surprising.)When I told him the title of the book, he said solemnly: "There's no such thing."His point is obvious, that there is no such thing as an "unnecessary woman". We're all necessary. Anyone who knows him will be just as shocked as I was to hear that he said that. He treats everyone (man or woman) as though they are expendable. Insignificant. Many of us in the office are reminded there are cultural differences at play here, and it's not worth taking any of it personally, etc. etc. etc. I won't say that I read this book with the sole intention of "understanding" him any better, though it was somewhere in the back of my mind. I know very little about Lebanese history or culture, which is truly shameful, and here I read the book that was the National Book Award finalist for 2013 which means it probably wouldn't have come to my attention otherwise. Could I feel more Western.This is a book after every bibliophile's heart. Anyone who has chosen a life surrounded by books and words, preferring an introvert's life of reading and solitude to whatever our society wants of us, will appreciate this novel. There are references galore to authors, novels, composers, artists, philosophers. It's a smorgasbord of cultural references.Aaliya is a 70-something woman who has just accidentally turned her hair blue. Every January 1st she starts translating a different book to Arabic and then spends the rest of the year working on it. Interspersed throughout the story are remembrances of Aaliya's - as a younger woman working in a bookstore, her childhood growing up in Beirut, a fascinating ambiguous relationship with a woman named Hannah. There are moments of well-turned phrases throughout this book, some of which struck chords within me that don't often get struck.But there were also things that didn't work for me. Aaliya is a vehicle for Alameddine's thoughts. This isn't uncommon in literature, obviously, but this was a bit more ham-handed than subtle. At times the story disappeared and I felt I was reading excerpts from essays written by Alameddine - these sections no longer felt to be of Aaliya's voice, making much of the story feel contrived and also detracted from the fact that the story is supposed to be told from a woman's point of view.I'm not sorry to have read this. I could relate to Aaliya in many ways, and someday when I'm in my 70s I'm sure I will accidentally turn my hair blue. As a bibliophile, I could appreciate that aspect of the book, though also feel that Alameddine used that as a way to manipulate his readers. Take a lot of that stuff out and I wonder if we would all like it so much as we do.But read it, certainly. There's some good insight into a history I'm not entirely familiar with. I wouldn't be able to go to work tomorrow and hold an intelligent conversation with some about what they lived through in Beirut; but then again, this is a respectable enough place to start. I found this to be a very interesting book - one written for those of us who love to read as the main character is a reader who makes sense of her life through the language of books. It's one of those books that is all about the main character's interior life…what she thinks about her life at 72. And it's set in modern day Beirut, offering a perspective on life there that is incomprehensible to me, but it's the background to this interior examination. Beautiful book!
Do You like book La Traduttrice (2013)?
This book is now one of my favorites, and definitely among the best that I had read this year.
—jesstro
