From the Bookshelf of Constant Reader…

An Unnecessary Woman

Rabih Alameddine

Start date: April 15, 2016

Finish date: May 1, 2016

Discussion: Reading List

Discussion leader: Tonya Presley

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Reading List

* The Schedule for July through Dec. 2025
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What Members Thought

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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