This is such a weird book...I don't know what to think about this, almost a month after I finished it. I had adored the other Hilary Mantel books that I read, so I wanted to try her earlier stuff. This was written 25 years ago, so its really early. And it's well written, I guess. But its SUCH an uncomfortable read. Basically, the idea is that a British woman follows her husband to Saudi Arabia for a contracting job he gets, and then slowly goes crazy stuck in the apartment alone. Its set up to be this psychological thriller where Arab culture/Islam stands in for the "other" and the "alien." The main character becomes sort of obsessed with what she perceives as the misogyny and general backwardness/ilogicalness of SA society and it all ends up feeling super politically incorrect to the reader in 2012. At the same time, Mantel has never shied away from creating unsympathetic or nasty main characters, so maybe she meant for the reader to come away thinking that the main character was pretty racist? Finally, the western world and its relationship to the Arab world, and specifically Saudi Arabia was not remotely the same in 1987 as it is 2012, so is it even fair to really judge the book with a 2012 perspective? I don't know...
I guess whatever else, this book got me thinking...