An Unnecessary Woman in The Roundtable

Dec 11, 2014 El rated it liked it

Shelves: 21st-centurylit, library-borrow, biddles

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 poi 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.
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Nov 25, 2018 Viv JM rated it liked it

Shelves: z2018-atw-winter-olympics-challenge, fiction-literary, read-in-2018, z2018-author-male, author-male

An Unnecessary Woman is a loving ode to introverts and the comforts of literature and I can see why many of my Goodreads friends loved it. However, for me. it just didn't quite hit the mark. I found the literary namedropping a bit pretentious at times and the voice of the author was too loud - I don't think he quite pulled off the perspective of an elderly woman. It's not that I disliked the book, and it certainly had a quiet beauty about it, I just felt it didn't quite live up to my hopes and e ...more

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Dec 07, 2014 Rosana rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 2015

I lost the count of how many times in the last few months I started this book and gave up at about page 30. I truly thought this was not going to work for me. But then... this last time it got me, and I am still mesmerized by it.

Rabih Alameddine did write it for bibliophiles and I don't think this book will work for someone that does not worship at literature's feet. I wish now that I had kept a list of books and authors as they are mentioned in the narrative. It would be a fun project to read t I lost the count of how many times in the last few months I started this book and gave up at about page 30. I truly thought this was not going to work for me. But then... this last time it got me, and I am still mesmerized by it.

Rabih Alameddine did write it for bibliophiles and I don't think this book will work for someone that does not worship at literature's feet. I wish now that I had kept a list of books and authors as they are mentioned in the narrative. It would be a fun project to read them, and a might consider a way to do it, as I never read a passel of the books mentioned. But if the list is erudite and highbrow, there is also a great a sense of humor in the voice of the main character, Aaliya, as she talks about her likes and dislikes: Thomas Mann's fascination with his own bowel movements; Heidegger's ridiculous knit cap; Alvaro de Campos, the dandy. There is also love and admiration for the likes of Pessoa, Spinoza, Rummi, Sebald, Coetzee, and many others.

As Aaliya narrates the story of her life and weaves book quotes, interesting stories about authors and musicians, we learn about the Lebanese Civil war and Beirut's violent history in the past 50 years.

If this book has a flaw is that at times the female voice rings untrue. I think that my trouble when I first started reading it is that the author left me unconvinced that the narrator was a woman. I wondered that Alameddine had made a mistake choosing a female 1st person narrator, and should had instead built a story around a male character. As the story evolved though I realized that he could not had done such a thing, as truly this is a book about women living inside a Muslim community. Through the mainly female characters, he exposes to us a myriad of women caught in a very hard historical and cultural time. Without exception each one of these women were defined by their civil status, be it married, divorced, widowed, or even forever betrothed to a dead fiance. So then I forgave Rabih Alameddine for what I think is an unnatural female voice or perspective at times. I withheld disbelief, embraced the book, and it ended in my list of favorites.

Books were Aaliya's salvation, her grounding to a place and time. It allowed her to expand well beyond the realities of her own life and the war raging around her. To a degree many of us in this site would relate to her... ...more

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Jan 06, 2014 Jen rated it liked it

Shelves: atw-globetrotter, audio, 2014-releases, 2016-reads

I enjoyed my time with Aaliya, who not only provided me with some insight into life in Beirut over the past 50 years or so, but provided her delightful opinions of many great authors and books. Highly recommended to book lovers for the latter alone. Without the bookish fun, it might only have been 3*s for me, but it was a pleasure to listen to - a great audio production from Brilliance Audio.

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