Girls of Riyadh
Drive by review...
Title: Girls of Riyadh
Author: Rajaa Alsanea
Copyright: 2007 for the English translation and publication; originally published in Arabic in 2005
Why did I pick it up? I read a review in The Economist (part admiring, part dismissive) and decided to pick up a copy.
Did I like the cover? No, the cover art/design would’ve put me off picking up a copy if I hadn’t read a review already - I thought it was a bit tacky.
Summary: Through the medium of a yahoo group, an anonymous Saudi woman of the upper “velvet” class narrates the lives and searches for love of four “fictional” young women. Her intros include snips of information about the feedback that she gets from readers and about her preferences in lipstick, etc. The cast of characters includes: Michelle, a Saudi-American who doesn’t quite fit in; Gamrah, who marries first but not happily; Lamees, the medical student who bounces around trying to figure out what she wants; and Sadeem, who is rejected by one suitor and strung along by another.
What did I think? If the glimpse into the in-some-ways very sequestered lives of wealthy Saudi women is accurate, I can see why the book caused a stir when it was published in Saudi Arabia. Having said that, most of the contents were pretty average chick lit; the only difference was the culture in which it was set.
Perhaps it is simply my western outlook, but I had a very hard time feeling sympathetic to Gamrah, who seemed to make little effort to earn or work toward her own happiness. She was utterly dependent on her family and her husband, and although she wasn’t happy, she didn’t make any effort to change that. She didn’t deserve the poor treatment she received, but she also never really stood up for herself. The other three were more sympathetic, in that they weren’t just going through the motions while waiting for an arranged marriage that would bring them their Princes Charming.
GoR is not a romance, it is chick lit, so I didn’t expect HEA for everyone…but it felt unfinished to me. Not because I needed to know if Michelle ever figured herself out or if Ganmah ever remarried, but because it seemed to stop in an awkward place.
I liked the narrative style, with interruptions and asides from the narrator in the form of email. The language itself didn’t strike me as either particularly lyrical or especially clunky; I’m not sure what that says about the translator, though. I wish my Arabic was good enough to read an adult book so I could compare the two (I’m only able to stumble through kids’ books, elementary ones at that).
New to me author? Yes. I think this may have been her debut, also.
Keeper? Nope, it was a library book.
Anything else to say? I was trying to figure out how to do a dueling review of Girls of Riyadh and The Saffron Kitchen, because they both said something about women in the Middle East and their positions in Islamic societies, but I couldn’t figure out how to do it right. And frankly, after I thought about it, I decided that it would be like comparing Sex in the City to a Barbara Samuels WF book ; the fact that the two books include underlying themes about the social position of women doesn't mean that the books themselves have anything else in common. Apples and oranges.
Title: Girls of Riyadh
Author: Rajaa Alsanea
Copyright: 2007 for the English translation and publication; originally published in Arabic in 2005
Why did I pick it up? I read a review in The Economist (part admiring, part dismissive) and decided to pick up a copy.
Did I like the cover? No, the cover art/design would’ve put me off picking up a copy if I hadn’t read a review already - I thought it was a bit tacky.
Summary: Through the medium of a yahoo group, an anonymous Saudi woman of the upper “velvet” class narrates the lives and searches for love of four “fictional” young women. Her intros include snips of information about the feedback that she gets from readers and about her preferences in lipstick, etc. The cast of characters includes: Michelle, a Saudi-American who doesn’t quite fit in; Gamrah, who marries first but not happily; Lamees, the medical student who bounces around trying to figure out what she wants; and Sadeem, who is rejected by one suitor and strung along by another.
What did I think? If the glimpse into the in-some-ways very sequestered lives of wealthy Saudi women is accurate, I can see why the book caused a stir when it was published in Saudi Arabia. Having said that, most of the contents were pretty average chick lit; the only difference was the culture in which it was set.
Perhaps it is simply my western outlook, but I had a very hard time feeling sympathetic to Gamrah, who seemed to make little effort to earn or work toward her own happiness. She was utterly dependent on her family and her husband, and although she wasn’t happy, she didn’t make any effort to change that. She didn’t deserve the poor treatment she received, but she also never really stood up for herself. The other three were more sympathetic, in that they weren’t just going through the motions while waiting for an arranged marriage that would bring them their Princes Charming.
GoR is not a romance, it is chick lit, so I didn’t expect HEA for everyone…but it felt unfinished to me. Not because I needed to know if Michelle ever figured herself out or if Ganmah ever remarried, but because it seemed to stop in an awkward place.
I liked the narrative style, with interruptions and asides from the narrator in the form of email. The language itself didn’t strike me as either particularly lyrical or especially clunky; I’m not sure what that says about the translator, though. I wish my Arabic was good enough to read an adult book so I could compare the two (I’m only able to stumble through kids’ books, elementary ones at that).
New to me author? Yes. I think this may have been her debut, also.
Keeper? Nope, it was a library book.
Anything else to say? I was trying to figure out how to do a dueling review of Girls of Riyadh and The Saffron Kitchen, because they both said something about women in the Middle East and their positions in Islamic societies, but I couldn’t figure out how to do it right. And frankly, after I thought about it, I decided that it would be like comparing Sex in the City to a Barbara Samuels WF book ; the fact that the two books include underlying themes about the social position of women doesn't mean that the books themselves have anything else in common. Apples and oranges.