An Unnecessary Woman

I had heard so much positive critical buzz about Rabih Alameddine's An Unnecessary Woman (#373) that I couldn't wait to get my hands on it.  When I first began reading it, I found it every bit as surprising, interesting and startling as I hoped it would be.  In my head, I was already giving it a rare five star rating.  But about a third of the way into the book, I began to get terribly bogged down.  Things never picked up again from there for me.  In the end, what began so well ultimately dwindled down to a disappointing and dispiriting read.

The narrator of this book is a seventy-two year old woman living by herself with her books in a run-down apartment in present day Beirut.  An arranged marriage which took her out of school and ended in a disgraceful divorce has dampened any hopes of a comfortable life.  Her family wants to force her out of her apartment so her favored brothers can move in.  She doggedly hangs on and supports herself by working in a small bookstore.  Now retired, she is able to devote her time to the annual choice of a book to translate into Arabic from a French and an English translation of the work.  Otherwise she eschews contact with others as much as she possibly can, and lives inside her own head with great contentment.  A major catastrophe for Aaliya is about to change all that.

Beirut is an unusual time and place to pick for the setting of this novel, and Aaliya is a most unlikely (and in many respects, unlikeable) heroine.  That was part of the problem with this book for me.  I found Mr. Alameddine's thoughts and actions unconvincing enough from a feminine perspective to distract from the story he was telling.  Things just didn't ring true for me.  Not that women can't or don't act the way Aaliya does on occasion, but the fact that it bothered me at all was enough to tell me something was off. 

I did feel while reading An Unnecessary Woman exactly like one of Aaliya's neighbors who comes to her aid at the end when she discovers a translation Aaliya has written in Arabic of Anna Karenina:  "Thank the Lord," she exclaims.  "I've read this.  I was worried because I hadn't even heard of the others.  I felt so small.  In all the other piles not one name I recognized.  I felt inadequate."  I make no pretensions to be one of the literati, but I found it difficult to understand Aaliya's devotion to preserving these books for herself in Arabic as a translation of a translation.  When she seals up the box of pages at the end of the project, they are consigned to their own Sheol.  What is the point?

You will have to be the judge of whether or not An Unnecessary Woman is a great read or something that can remain at the bottom of your book pile, but will undoubtedly impress people simply because of its presence there.