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I Am Happier to Know You: A Portrait of Egypt, Her People, Faith & Culture, Viewed Through the Heart of a Western Woman
I Am Happier to Know You is the story of the people, culture, sights and fragrances of Egypt and the Middle East viewed through the eyes and heart of a single, midlife woman. Concurrently, it’s a memoir of the joys and challenges author Jeanne M. Eck embraced when, on wings of faith, she left her Western culture behind and moved to Egypt.
- GenresMiddle East
327 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 2005
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
April 12, 2020
The author visited Egypt as a tourist then moved to Cairo and Alexandria in Egypt for a duration over 1 year leaving her family and her life in US. A courageous adventure for a middle-aged lady not knowing the local language and rules of the society. Through her interaction with the Egyptian people, challenges and joy of living abroad, she discovers that peace begins when we understand, respect and embrace ourselves and the offer the same to others.
August 20, 2008
I never would have finished this book if I was in the US while I was reading it (it would have ended up at the bottom of a pile next the bed), but here, with a thin number of books remaining on the "to read" shelf, I forced myself to keep at it. I have realized the luxury of a good public library - I can give a book a fifty page try and if it isn't working out, it's back to the library.
There is also the subject matter - as a book by a middle-aged ex-pat giving her first person description of living in Cairo and Alexandria in 2001-2002, it should be of interest to me, but ... it was a chore to read.
She explains that this book is a reworking of emails sent home to friends while she was here, and this seems to give the book it's bumpdy-bump lack of flow. It might have worked better if she had edited personal stuff out and presented the email messages as such.
Another problem is that the author presents her opinions as categorical statements almost without exception. Perhaps it is the influence of the present presidential campaign, but I am not finding people with categorical views all that attractive. Having admitted up front that she is not in any way an expert on this region or Egypt, after a year here she nonetheless makes all sorts of "Egyptian men are this" and "Egyptian (fill in a social group) are that" statements that get tiring quickly since the situation is a lot more complicated than she presents it.
There are plenty of anecdotes about her time in Egypt. These are mostly entertaining and the best part of the book and somewhere over half of it, I would guess. Some of the rest of the content is less entertaining but more revealing (about her). The author has an eclectic set of personal beliefs that include thinking that the pyramids are "spiritually significant" and wanting to lie in the sarcophagus in the Great Pyramid. Ahhh... well. Hm. she also uses some language that I find puzzling - that is, some of the words she uses to refer to some people (men only, now that I think of it) aren't ones I expect to find in a book by a woman who I would guess is about five years older than I am.
Summary - it has a lot of information about Egypt from "through the heart of a Western woman." (I guess that means not necessarily true, but they are her impressions after all.) There's just a fair amount of other stuff to ignore to get to it.
There is also the subject matter - as a book by a middle-aged ex-pat giving her first person description of living in Cairo and Alexandria in 2001-2002, it should be of interest to me, but ... it was a chore to read.
She explains that this book is a reworking of emails sent home to friends while she was here, and this seems to give the book it's bumpdy-bump lack of flow. It might have worked better if she had edited personal stuff out and presented the email messages as such.
Another problem is that the author presents her opinions as categorical statements almost without exception. Perhaps it is the influence of the present presidential campaign, but I am not finding people with categorical views all that attractive. Having admitted up front that she is not in any way an expert on this region or Egypt, after a year here she nonetheless makes all sorts of "Egyptian men are this" and "Egyptian (fill in a social group) are that" statements that get tiring quickly since the situation is a lot more complicated than she presents it.
There are plenty of anecdotes about her time in Egypt. These are mostly entertaining and the best part of the book and somewhere over half of it, I would guess. Some of the rest of the content is less entertaining but more revealing (about her). The author has an eclectic set of personal beliefs that include thinking that the pyramids are "spiritually significant" and wanting to lie in the sarcophagus in the Great Pyramid. Ahhh... well. Hm. she also uses some language that I find puzzling - that is, some of the words she uses to refer to some people (men only, now that I think of it) aren't ones I expect to find in a book by a woman who I would guess is about five years older than I am.
Summary - it has a lot of information about Egypt from "through the heart of a Western woman." (I guess that means not necessarily true, but they are her impressions after all.) There's just a fair amount of other stuff to ignore to get to it.
January 8, 2011
When the book first arrived, I was kind of disappointed, as it looked like something written by a "naive" expat. However, I was able to get into it fairly quickly; she strikes a good balance between respecting Egyptian culture, and being played as a foreigner. Some have been put off by her anti-male attitude, but I found myself agreeing with her most of the time. I will say the last 1/3 dragged a bit, after she goes to live briefly in Alexandria, a vacation in Malta, and back to Cairo; that section has an emphasis on the cats she's adopted, which didn't do much for me either. Recommended, with that in mind.
February 8, 2008
I read this before going to Egypt because I wanted to get a sense of what the culture was like. Eck is an female American ex-pat who lived and worked in Egypt (Cairo and Alexandria). She does a good job of relating the good & bad of Egyptian life (well, ex-pat life) without being condescending. It gave me some context for a culture I really knew nothing about. And it was a good read too. :)
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews