Stewart's Books > Book reviews by Stewart

From A Crooked Rib

Posted : 3 years, 2 months ago on 24 September 2006 07:36 (A review of From a Crooked Rib (Penguin Modern Classics))

Nuruddin Farah's first novel, From A Crooked Rib, looks at life in his native Somalia from a feminine perspective. Despite being male, he choose to use this novel to discuss the status of women and their treatment in what is a country balancing traditional and Islamic values while fending off the outside influence of former colonial powers.

It begins with the graceful orphan, Ebla, who, her grandfather has announced, will marry a man she has not met. Not wanting to give herself away to the stranger, considerably older than her, she escapes her nomadic life by running to the town of Belet Wene, where a cousin lives. The cousin, like her grandfather, takes her in and sells her "like cattle" to a broker as a wife. On hearing this she flees again, this time to the city of Mogadishu, where, despite seeking equality, she learns that to be a woman in Somalia means little in comparison to being a man. Yet, with all the struggles within society as she pushes for her own equality, she finds herself questioning her religion and the world around her:

"What an agony, what a revolting situation! Naturally women are born in nine months (unless the case is abnormal) just like men. What makes women so inferior to men? Why is it that a girl should refund a token amount to her parents in the form of a dowry, while a boy needs the amount or more to get a woman? Why is it only the sons in the family who are counted? For sure this world is a man's - it is his dominion. It is his and is going to be his as long as women are oppressed, as long as women are sold and bought like camels, as long as this remains the system of life. Nature is against women."

Ebla's life in Mogadishu continues to teach her valuable lessons about her place in society; her naivete leads her through marriages, divorce, prostitution, and reflections upon the horrible practice of female circumcision. All the while she argues - within her head - her place in the world, without having the conviction to speak her mind. Traditional values, at times, retain their hold on her.

It's written by Farah from a female point of view and while I wouldn't be the best judge of what a woman thinks, he certainly has the degrees of indecisiveness to a tee. Ebla felt convincing, in her way, and so I would rather praise Farah for creating a vivid character, rather than one that was truly authentic.

The prose itself isn't all that flowery, being matter of fact, although there are times when it heads off into good passages that try to delve deeper into the psyche of why women are supposedly inferior within her world. There's an interesting scene, toward the end, where Ebla discusses the matter to herself mimicking a man's voice to counter her own questions; and then reverses this so that she answers the man's.

From A Crooked Rib is a short novel, coming in at less than 200 pages, but it carries with it many points for discussion around Somalian practices, Islamic law, and the place of women in the world. But in the end it boils down to men need women, women need men, and the world would be a happier place if we treated each other as equals. Something that religion doesn't exactly help with. From a crooked rib to a straight story: worth reading.

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Only The Lonely

Posted : 3 years, 2 months ago on 21 September 2006 03:19 (A review of The Lonely Londoners)

First published in 1956, Trinidadian born, Sam Selvon, began his London based fictions with a short novel called The Lonely Londoners. It's set during a time when many West Indians were emigrating from a life of sunshine to the British Isles, believing, like many emigrants, that the streets were paved with gold. Of course, this is London we're talking about; there's no gold.

The book, for the most part follows the fortunes of Moses Aloetta, a Trinidadian who has lived in London for years, as his life meets tangentially with others. His time is spent between his job, in which he is paid a meagre wage, and heading on down to Waterloo to meet the latest influx of West Indians.

There all manner of characters coming to London, and not only from the West Indies. Shiftless ladies' man Cap, for example, is Nigerian. But the majority are coming from Trinidad and Jamaica. Local prejudice tends to label all the black immigrants as being Jamaican, which rankles Moses. Other characters include Henry Oliver (nicknamed Sir Galahad), a young kid looking to start over in London; Tolroy, who on writing home to say he gets paid five pounds a week, wasn't intending the letter to be an invitation for his whole family to join him; Five Past Twelve, an ex-soldier always on the scrounge; Big City, who has always been captivated by urban living yet can't quite integrate; and Harris, a man who has found himself in London yet is still tied to the burgeoning black community.

The novel follows their fortunes as they come to Moses for help, as they crash in on each others' lives, and flirt with the white women who see them as a novelty; all the time wondering if they will ever return home. Through all this, though, there's a sense of unease. For the native Londoners there are too many black people coming for work; the immigrants also share this resentment, in that the other immigrants are seen as competition for what little jobs are available. Most jobs, when the person is discovered to be black, tend to offer lower wages too.

What makes The Lonely Londoners special is the narrative. Rather than a straightforward English narrative, Selvon has opted for the third person narrator to tell the tale in creolised English, which give the effect of bringing the reader into the immigrant community:

"When he get to Waterloo he hop off and went in the station, and right away in that big station he had a feeling of homesickness that he never felt in the nine-ten years he in this country. For the old Waterloo is a place of arrival and departure, is a place where you see people crying goodbye and kissing welcome, and he hardly have time to sit down on a bench before this feeling of nostalgia hit him and he was surprise."

Selvon's characterisation works well with this creolised style but it's more than a tragi-comedy of the life in fifties London as immigrants try to find work and settle. Life is hard, the people reduced to living in small rooms. Jobs are scarce. And there is much racism coming from the local people and businesses, which Galahad struggles to understand when, still hoping for a job, he says:

"The Pole who have that restaurant, he ain't have no more right in this country than we. In fact we is British subjects, and he is a foreigner."

Galahad takes this further when he addresses the colour Black itself:

"Why the hell you can't be blue, or red or green, if you can't be white? You know is you that cause a lot of misery in the world. Is not me, you know, is you! I ain't do anything to infuriate the people and them, is you! Look at you, you so black and innocent, and this time you causing misery all over the world."


The Loneley Londoners doesn't follow a conventional storyline, opting instead to collect a bundle of stories about its characters adapting to life in London, using Moses as their backbone. This method actually gives the story more direction than one would expect and also blesses it, for its size, with an epic feel.

For all its sense of community, The Lonely Londoners, as you would expect from title, isn't a bunch of laughs. Sure, there's much comedy to be had, but an undercurrent of sadness runs throughout. Employment, racism, immigration, relationships, personal ambition, and nationality all come under Selvon's spotlight in a book that is anything but black and white.

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The Fascination Of Zeller

Posted : 3 years, 2 months ago on 21 September 2006 03:16 (A review of The Fascination of Evil)

Florian Zeller, from what I can gather, is the latest darling of the French literary scene. At twenty-six, he is a novelist, a playwright, and a lecturer. And, for one so young, he has received a number of literary awards. His third novel, The Fascination Of Evil, was recently published by Pushkin Press, a publisher well known for producing quality books from international authors, new and old. And, as novels go, it's a mature work with hints of Kundera, dealing with the decline of morals in both Islamic nations and the West.

The story begins with the unnamed narrator preparing for a flight to Egypt for a literary conference. He is due to meet and travel with Swiss novelist, Martin Millet, of whom he is aware but not acquainted in person or in work. And while the narrator, with his girlfriend at home, is looking for a quiet life, Millet is more interested in kicking up a fuss within Egyptian society, spouting his opinions on Islam, and, for most of the novel, finding local women who will have sex with him. This latter desire is inspired by letters Flaubert wrote about his time in Egypt. And, as Millet's obsession grows, the narrator finds himself dragged further into the author's world. Then, without warning, Millet vanishes. The narrator, of course, can do nothing but fear the worst for his companion.

The Fascination Of Evil concerns itself, at a deeper level, with the diminishing power of words. It looks at the suras of the Koran, at their hold over the devout, but then, as Millet learns during a meal, there are those who claim to hold true to the tenets of Islam yet, the minute they head to a more liberal nation, the words that dictate their faith are soon forgotten:

"They're not Egyptian women. They are often Lebanese or Moroccan, but they are not Egyptian. And they only sleep with Saudis, I believe. In any event, for Egyptians, there is no prostitution and no sexual freedom."

"What do they do?" lamented Martin.

"They bugger each other."

Apart from that, the food was excellent."

Zeller, however, is not like Millet and is not out to upset Islam. Indeed, aside from pointing out the hypocrisy inherent with some Muslims, he also takes a swipe at Europe. The continent has allowed freedom to send it into decline. Political correctness has reared its ugly head and when religious groups (say, Muslims) protest at novels (Rushdie gets an honourable mention), we seek to remove the offence rather than staunchly support it. By seeking to be inoffensive we are watering down our own culture. Such subtexts lend the novel an impressive depth and you can't help but agree with Zeller's observations.

The book's title, as it would be giving nothing away, relates to the feeling of fearing the worst. The narrator comes to feel the fascination of evil when Millet vanishes after a night out hunting women. But the true fascination, as implied by the denouement, is the fear of what is happening to the west. There are many facets in which our continent, the narrator believes, is falling apart, one such example being letter-writing:

"It's the telephone, and in particular the mobile, that has killed off the art of letter-writing once and for all. I often think of those women who lived in hope, with the pledge of one single love letter, when the other person, for example, went off to war. Back then, words had a formidable strength, since they decided lives. People waited, and trusted, even without news of the other person, for infinite lengths of time. Today, you start panicking the moment you can't get that other person on your mobile. What's he doing? Why isn't she answering? Who's he with? Anxiety has gained ground. We have entered a period of no return that signals the end of waiting, that is, of trust and silence."

Zeller's prose style is not florid - to an extent it's simplistic, realist. Each sentence serves to make a point or an observation and does so without decoration. If I were to have a criticism it would be the sheer volume of exclamation marks used where they were wholly unnecessary, although that may be a quirk of a translator who had a quote to use up, especially when they would appear in the narrative rather than within speech.

Although The Fascination Of Evil, at times, reminded me of Kundera because of the sporadic digressions the narrator would make, the ending was more reminiscent of Houellebecq's Atomised in that the narrator goes beyond the original narrative and aims to provide a conclusion to all that has gone before, something, I admit, for which I'm not a convert. But, overall, Zeller succeeds at producing a great tale that offers up some interesting points that merit consideration.

And, while he's still young, The Fascination Of Evil showcases the wisdom of an fantastic talent who must surely be deserving of an great future in literature. And, since I've already been looking into his previous novels, it certainly looks like this novel could just be the beginning to my fascination of Zeller.

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