Book Review: The Sand Fish By Maha Gargash
Title: a review from an Emirati Woman’s perspective
The Sand Fish was a book that is very special to me and which I was looking so forward to reading. The reason behind that was that it is a novel whose settings take place in Dubai in the 1950s that had an Emirati woman as its main lead. Me as a reader, found myself already relating to the book even before reading it because I was a local while I am an Emirati woman living in Dubai in 2010.
The author is also an Emirati Woman who managed to get this book published by HarperColins which caused some of my insecurities as a writer to decrease slightly. I always tended to worry about my book not seeing the publishing world because of the geographical differences between myself and my target audience, feeling that publishers might not take me very seriously but after seeing that Maha was able to get a deal out of one of the biggest publishing houses I couldn’t help but be inspired by her.
Th best world that I could describe this novel would be Ethentic; everything about it was authentic; the settings, the situautions, the culture and even the charecters. All of the charecters in this book were authentic, Sager, Latifa, Jassim even Rashid was very Authentic in how they acted and thought; which was something that I enjoyed.
The only character which I didn’t think was authentic was the main character herself, Noora. I am actually on the fence in terms of her character. As an Emirati woman I know that traditions and culture require that we don’t have any inimate meetings or actions with guys that we are not directly related to; though these days not a lot of girls think that but I was always told and thougth that woman back in the 1950s followed that rule more strictly than today seeing as how they have been brought up like that. I personally still respect that tradition and abid by it so I was more than surprised when I saw Noora not resisting Rashid at all during their meetings; that caused me to raise an eyebrow and long for Noor to be a bit stronger in that manner. Though at the same time she is a girl with Hormones which makes the action realistic, but not enough to justify it.
After she gets married I was happy that she got a good enough husband, sure he was old but at least he wasn’t the abusive sterotype that most husbands tend to be in arranged marriages. Yet I can understand that because he was old and she did not have any feeling for him; she gave into Hamad as well. One thing that bothers me about it is that she would have been more causious with him from her experience with Rashid.
The ending was what surprised me the most, but it did make the ending seem more real to me; how she didn’t end up with Hamad; which was something that I really liked about her. She was not one of those selfish heroine who looks at only her own happiness and run off with Hamad, have her name, her brother’s name and her family discrased by the action but choose to remain with her husband. It wasn’t her ideal life but she wasn’t misrable either.
This novel was basically a battle for me in terms of how comlient women were to traditions; which had a lot of modern time influence comparing to what I would have normally thought to be in the 1950s
Rating: 3.8/5