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An Unnecessary Woman

A Novel

ebook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available
A happily misanthropic Middle East divorcee finds refuge in books in a “beautiful and absorbing” novel of late-life crisis (The New York Times).
 
Aaliya is a divorced, childless, and reclusively cranky translator in Beirut nurturing doubts about her latest project: a 900-page avant-garde, linguistically serpentine historiography by a late Chilean existentialist. Honestly, at seventy-two, should she be taking on such a project? Not that Aailiya fears dying. Women in her family live long; her mother is still going crazy. But on this lonely day, hour-by-hour, Aaliya’s musings on literature, philosophy, her career, and her aging body, are suddenly invaded by memories of her volatile past. As she tries in vain to ward off these emotional upwellings, Aaliya is faced with an unthinkable disaster that threatens to shatter the little life she has left.
 
In this “meditation on, among other things, aging, politics, literature, loneliness, grief and resilience” (The New York Times), Alameddine conjures “a beguiling narrator . . . who is, like her city, hard to read, hard to take, hard to know and, ultimately, passionately complex” (San Francisco Chronicle). A finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the National Book Award, An Unnecessary Woman is “a fun, and often funny . . . grave, powerful . . . [and] extraordinary” Washington Independent Review of Books) ode to literature and its power to define who we are. “Read it once, read it twice, read other books for a decade or so, and then pick it up and read it anew. This one’s a keeper” (The Independent)
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    • Publisher's Weekly

      Starred review from October 14, 2013
      Midway through Alameddine’s new novel, the narrator thinks: “There should be a literary resolution: No more epiphanies. Enough. Have pity on readers who reach the end of a real-life conflict in confusion and don’t experience a false sense of temporary enlightenment.” Like his previous novel The Hakawati, An Unnecessary Woman is set in Beirut, and this time the beauties and horrors of the city are seen through the eyes of Aalyia Sohbi, a 72-year-old translator who was born there and remained through the war. The elements that make up Aalyia’s chosen life are minimal: reading, translating, an apartment, and a single friend, dead long ago. Her habit of many years is to begin each new translation, according to a strict system, on the first day of the year. The solitude that allows for this work is precious, unusual, and precarious, and when it is threatened by the ongoing war and her patriarchal family, she answers with a machine gun. Alameddine’s most glorious passages are those that simply relate Aalyia’s thoughts, which read like tiny, wonderful essays. A central concern of the book is the nature of the desire of artistic creators for their work to matter, which the author treats with philosophical suspicion. In the end, Aalyia’s epiphany is joyful and freeing. Agent: Nicole Aragi, Aragi Agency.

    • Booklist

      Starred review from November 1, 2013
      Seventy-two-year-old Beirut native Aaliya Sobhi, living a solitary life, has always felt herself unnecessary. The father who adored her died young, and her remarried mother focused attention on Aaliya's half brothers, leaving her to describe herself as my family's appendix, its unnecessary appendage, an attitude reinforced by her Lebanese culture. Divorced at 20 after a negligible marriage, she lived alone and began her life's work of translating the novels she most loved into Arabic from other translations, then simply storing them, unread, in her apartment. Sustained by her blind lust for the written word and surrounded by piles of books, she anticipates beginning a new translation project each year until disaster appears to upend her life. But these are just the bare bones of a plot. The richness here is in Aaliya's first-person narration, which veers from moments in her life to literature to the wars that have wracked her beloved native city during her lifetime. Studded with quotations and succinct observations, this remarkable novel by Alameddine (The Hakawati, 2008) is a paean to fiction, poetry, and female friendship. Dip into it, make a reading list from it, or simply bask in its sharp, smart prose.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)

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