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I guess this will be a review entitled “The many reasons why I was disappointed by this novel…��
I’ve picked this one up because I’m reading along the Arabic Fiction Prize this year in hope of finding new favourite books or authors.
This novel in particular has a premise that I often find it interesting. A woman in her early forties trying to get a grip on what otherwise seems to her a wasted life. The life of Salma�� or Reema because we never know for sure�� has always been coloured by disappointments and deep frustrations. From the moment she was born a girl, her father gives her a boy’s name which leads her to numberless embarrassments throughout her childhood. As a young kid, she faces sexual abuse by her family driver and, when she falls in love in college, her lover walks out of their relationship as it has never happened in the first place. Salma feels that even her marriage was a contract made for her family’s and husband’s full benefit. She put up with her husband’s infidelity and sterility just to keep a socially acceptable image of her life. Until she decides that she will take her life back into her own hands while also writing a novel.
Salma’s initial idea of the book she’s going to write is interesting. She wants to create a dual narrative about each person who mistreats her and her simultaneous act of walking away or avenging such mistreatment.
While the premise of this novel seems enticing to say the least, it has such a poor execution. Starting from the title الرواية المسروقة and the novel the heroine is writing, I hoped that it will have an innovative approach to meta fiction, but honestly it was messy and lacks a strong thread. The plot is way overdramatised and escalates in such an unconvincing way that made me rise an eyebrow all the time I was reading lol. Maybe it’s meant to be symbolic for something deeper or more representative of the publishing industry and contemporary culture, but its weak execution made it unworthy of trying to find any meaning. Not only the plot was just throwing events at the reader’s face, but the author’s seems to enjoy making an overgeneralised statement about women, life, or writing in every paragraph. I think that the author could have done much better with the idea. May I add one more thing: I hated all the characters lol and there’s not a single character that I even remotely liked 😊