Until Women of Karantina, I haven’t had much luck in Arabic literature. Granted, having read only two books originally published in Arabic (In Praise of Hatred and Girls of Riyahd), that’s hardly a statistical sampling. So now, with book three that I have read from Arabic, I can proclaim Women of Karantina to be the best book translated from Arabic I have read (to the best of my knowledge – maybe I read another book translated from Arabic when I was a kid but the fact that I don’t remember it, even if I did read one, likely says it wasn’t very good).

Reading, I kept being reminded of something. It took a good third of the way through the book for me to figure it out. Women of Karantina was reminding me of One Hundred Years of Solitude. Both have a family, although in Women of Karantina, some members are bonded by blood, others bonded by proximity. They have exploits, wild, crazy, revolving exploits, in Alexandria, whirling up and pulling more and more people in, like being swept down a drain or swept up in a sandstorm. The whole thing is a folly, the silliness and the megalomania and the scheming and the treachery and every plan failing and succeeding marvelously at the same time. Is it as polished and magical as One Hundred Years of Solitude? No, but it comes close.

Once he told his Mama that he felt like a zero before the decimal, like something worthless.

(Oh Hamada, sometimes I feel like that too.) But, with the above quote, we can see how Women of Karantina isn’t as accomplished as One Hundred Years of Solitude; do we really need that added phrase “like something worthless”? That’s understood. Trust your readers to figure it out. There are also repetitions of certain phrases, characters changing personalities and tastes on a whim, a narrator that is sometimes a bit too intrusive for eir own good, and background about Alexandria dumped into the story when I would rather get back to the story of the main characters, not learn about how Alexandria once tried to ban tobacco and hookahs. We have dreams (but that’s clearly an issue I have no one else, since every book I read people talk about their dreams) as shortcuts for character development, and the cheap trick of someone’s friend turning out to be dum dum dum a figment of his imagination. Plus the use of faggot for virtually every insult. Oh my goodness, you have all of Arabic at your disposal, switch up the insults (or at least, drop the homophobic one for something else). So almost magical, but not quite.

As to the translation, my knowledge of Arabic hovers an epsilon away from zero, but often the verb tense didn’t fit. There’s a lot of the omniscient narrator using (and I had to look this up) present continuous in the story, i.e. “We are still in the early days of Spring” and “Inji and Ali are now satisfied that their path is secure.” Each time it happened, I was pushed out of the story. Perhaps this is how the present tense works in Arabic (come on Duolingo people, let’s get working on an Arabic course for me) and the translator wanted to keep the feeling of a tale originally spun in Arabic? I don’t know. It stuck out.

Still, for all my whinging in the last few paragraphs, I enjoyed Women of Karantina. Awful people doing awful things to each other, but still, it earns my smile.

Women of Karantina by Nael Eltoukhy went on sale January 15, 2015.

I received a copy free from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

I’m not sure how I should write about A History of Loneliness by John Boyne. It’s a book that made me want to throw my kobo against the wall. I think that’s what Boyne wanted, for people to be angry about sexual abuse within the Catholic church, but my anger at this book wasn’t for that; my anger at this book was for how glossy it was. My anger at this book was for how insensitive Father Odran Yates, the protagonist, is. My anger at this book is just all encompassing and I want to stop reviewing and never have to think of it again. Every comment I made in the (electronic) margins on my kobo is caustic and rude and I am going to try and smooth them out and hopefully not give into the nauseated feeling in my stomach.

So we have a priest, Father Odran Yates. He is a good priest, feels the calling of God, enjoys his priesthood. There’s some unnecessary intrigue when he’s sent to the Vatican and is embroiled in the deaths of Pope John Paul I and whoever was before Pope John Paul I (my Catholic family members are pretty embarrassed for me right now, not knowing who came before Pope John Paul I). The novel suggests that Pope John Paul I was going to do something about some nascent scandal within the Irish Catholic church, which the reader assumes to be the rampant sexual abuse, and hints that Pope John Paul I was murdered for this. The novel then becomes quite scathing against Pope John Paul I’s successor, Pope John Paul II. Less hints this time: That man hates women. Direct quote. There’s also some unnecessary back story about Yates’ brother who drowned and Yates’ widowed sister with dementia that could be excised completely without much fuss, although I suppose it’s meant to counter the argument that people with lousy upbringings will do lousy things, like rape children. Because Yates had a lousy upbringing and still managed to keep his penis to himself.

Back to Father Odran Yates, who, for the most part, is upset regarding the unrestrained sexual abuse by priests because it makes him look bad. It means people don’t respect him on the Luas. It means men are angry with him in coffee shops. It means that he grows tired of having a chaperone when he talks to his altar boys. For something like eighty percent of the novel, Yates does not seem to understand that this is not about him. People are rightly angry because of the years of abuse perpetrated by the church. He has no compassion for the victims of sexual abuse, instead painting himself as the true victim in all this. This infuriates me. I am incensed. It’s taken me hours to write this review because I get so angry and I have to walk away. I suppose he comes around when he realizes that his friend, another priest, sexually assaulted Odran’s nephew (which he then makes about himself, visiting the nephew even though the nephew has cut off all contact with Yates, because Yates needs the nephew to absolve him. Yep, back to what Yates needs rather than what anyone else does), but for a priest who goes on and on about how this is his true calling, he seems to have no ability for humility and no compassion. No Matthew 9:36 (Seeing the people, He felt compassion for them, because they were distressed and dispirited like sheep without a shepherd) for Yates. This is all about him. The book ends with Yates realizing he must have known about other abuses, but chose to look away. The End. No self reflection or anything about this. Just stop.

Ignoring the repugnance of the plot, the writing is all right. Not spectacular, and I’m still biased towards spectacular Irish writing after my time with Frank O’Connor earlier this winter. It’s really slick, the writing. It’s not uncomfortable the way it should be to reflect the content. I know that seems like an odd criticism, that the writing is too smooth for the context, but I can think of no other way to put it. Facile maybe? I know people are going to connect with this book and it’ll likely sell millions of copies (the author also wrote The Boy in the Striped Pajamas), but there’s no depth. It’s like a puddle rather than a sea.

You want some amazing writing about Ireland: read Frank O’Connor. You want a meaningful fictitious book on sexual abuse within the Catholic church: read The Bishop’s Man by Linden MacIntyre instead.

A History of Loneliness by John Boyne went on sale September 11, 2014.

I received a copy free from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.