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This is another book I read for my book club that I had never heard of before they voted on it. When I looked it up, I read a synopsis that said something about a woman translating books after her divorce and I thought it sounded so boring. But I wanted to go to the next meeting so I went ahead and read it anyway.
It is not boring!
I quickly fell in love with this book by Rabih Alameddine. The narrator, Aaliya, is a 72-year-old divorcée who has spent most of her life single. She has lived her entire life in Beirut, so she married young. It turned out her husband was impotent, but since she lives in a society that refuses to acknowledge male impotence and blames all its problems on women, she was the one who got blamed when he divorced her. Her parents urged her to remarry, but she refused. She happened to luck out in getting the apartment in the divorce and her best friend helps her get a job in a bookstore so she can afford to pay her own rent and buy food, plus a few luxuries now and then.
Aaliya is the oldest, but all her siblings are half siblings and she was raised by her mother and stepfather. She has one half sister, a bunch of half brothers, and she was always treated like an unwanted child while her brothers were showered with love and attention. Once she’s divorced, her family tries to talk her into giving up her apartment, saying her brothers need it more because they have families and she’s being selfish by living in that big apartment all by herself. But Aaliya refuses to give it up and her landlord takes her side.
Sometime after the divorce, Aaliya (who is fluent in English, French, and Arabic) has decided to translate a favorite book into Arabic every year, but only books that were not originally written in English or French. So she’s translating translations, which she admits means her works are probably not very accurate, but she has never tried to get them published. She just stores them in boxes in her spare bedroom and moves on to the next project.
As the narration bounces around from the present to her past, Aaliya talks about her favorite authors, poets, musicians, and painters. She talks about how she discovered music (probably my favorite section of the book), gives anecdotes on the lives of her artists and sometimes compares them to her own life/personality, and is constantly quoting her favorite writers as passages seem pertinent to what she is going through and/or talking about.
Aaliya was the reason I loved this book so much. I decided I liked her almost immediately because she is sassy and snarky and irreverent and I loved everything about her.
What did you guys read this week? Anything else you wouldn’t have picked up on your own?