Linguistically rich, Khoury-Ghata’s novel seems only partially complete.
A poetic novel about a Jewish girl meant to marry the Emir.
When “the scrawny old man riding a donkey” appears between two sand dunes, Yudah is disappointed. She’d imagined the rabbi would have “a potbelly like all well-fed men, with perhaps one or two gold teeth to taunt the sun.” Still, after the rabbi inspects all the tribe’s eligible girls and chooses Yudah as a bride for Emir Abdelkader, she goes with him to the city. She’s soon disappointed: The rabbi’s plan to ingratiate the Jews with the Muslim leader quickly falls apart. Khoury-Ghata’s latest book to appear in English is lyrical and slim and apparently based on a little-known figure from history. Yudah makes for a compelling heroine. When she arrives at his tents, Abdelkader is away at war. He is soon banished from Algeria to the port of Toulon with his wives, while his followers—and Yudah—are sent to Île Sainte-Marguerite. From there, Yudah’s adventures only multiply. Still, Khoury-Ghata’s emphasis is less on plot than on language, which has been beautifully rendered into English by Fagan. On Île Sainte-Marguerite, for example, where Abdelkader’s followers are scared, sick, and starving—and suspicious of Yudah—“an old woman saw Abdelkader in a dream arriving in three signs, three days, or three weeks to take them home. He was riding the waves and the waves flattened as he went over them. He brought back everyone, except the girl who claimed to be his future wife.” Still, despite the lyricism and Yudah’s compelling story, Khoury-Ghata’s book lacks something—some depth or rich entanglement. A late-stage appearance by Victor Hugo strains credulity even though it is apparently based in fact. This is a lovely book but not, in the end, a great one.
Linguistically rich, Khoury-Ghata’s novel seems only partially complete.Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2023
ISBN: 9781803092447
Page Count: 184
Publisher: Seagull Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 9, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
I Who Have Never Known Men ($22.00; May 1997; 224 pp.; 1-888363-43-6): In this futuristic fantasy (which is immediately reminiscent of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale), the nameless narrator passes from her adolescent captivity among women who are kept in underground cages following some unspecified global catastrophe, to a life as, apparently, the last woman on earth. The material is stretched thin, but Harpman's eye for detail and command of tone (effectively translated from the French original) give powerful credibility to her portrayal of a human tabula rasa gradually acquiring a fragmentary comprehension of the phenomena of life and loving, and a moving plangency to her muted cri de coeur (``I am the sterile offspring of a race about which I know nothing, not even whether it has become extinct'').
Pub Date: May 1, 1997
ISBN: 1-888363-43-6
Page Count: 224
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1997
BOOK REVIEW
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