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A review by nomadjg
Girls of Riyadh by Rajaa Alsanea
3.0
I have carried this book around for a while. I got it from my friend Alan when we last visited him in Singapore. I needed something fun to read and this fit the bill. The author wants to tell stories of young women to address some of the contradictions of Saudi society. I guess all the recent bad press for the kingdom from killing a journalist to the humanitarian crisis from their dirty war in Yemen drew me to read it in order to connect to the people. We are all just people. Other things are happening in Saudi Arabia such as putting out music videos creatively demanding the right to drive (+ parodying Trump) and gaining the right to drive: https://www.facebook.com/ajplusenglish/videos/872087866266055/
A blurb said this book is Sex and the City for Riyadh. It is Sex and the City without the sex. Both this book and Sex and the City depict trying to find self-love while looking for that special someone in the context of the contradictions of their own moment and place. Having lived in the UAE, which Alsanea refers to as a more open Saudi Arabia, I just felt like these women could have been my students. They and these characters know that women need the love, openness, and confidentiality of other girls and women to survive. Romantic love would also be nice.
This is an epistolary novel told in weekly installments on a yahoo group written every Friday (Jum'ah), which is "Sunday" in the Muslim world.
She calls out hypocrisy: "May all repent for their sins after reading about them on the Internet" (57).
She depicts heartbreak particularly well: "As the days passed, she no longer listened to such songs to give herself comfort, but rather to keep herself immersed in the intoxication of grief that she had discovered after the failure of her first love. This was an experience she had in common with most lovers who have suffered loss or betrayal; a masochistic ordeal where pain becomes pleasurable. The trauma leads us to create a tent for wise thoughts in which we sit to philosophize about our life that is passing by outside" (62).
Finally, the author originally published this in Arabic with some English and then actually rewrote it to work in English which is unusual and really paid off. She uses common Arabic words and offers definitions that appear at the bottom of the page.
This is a fun read with some cultural insights.
A blurb said this book is Sex and the City for Riyadh. It is Sex and the City without the sex. Both this book and Sex and the City depict trying to find self-love while looking for that special someone in the context of the contradictions of their own moment and place. Having lived in the UAE, which Alsanea refers to as a more open Saudi Arabia, I just felt like these women could have been my students. They and these characters know that women need the love, openness, and confidentiality of other girls and women to survive. Romantic love would also be nice.
This is an epistolary novel told in weekly installments on a yahoo group written every Friday (Jum'ah), which is "Sunday" in the Muslim world.
She calls out hypocrisy: "May all repent for their sins after reading about them on the Internet" (57).
She depicts heartbreak particularly well: "As the days passed, she no longer listened to such songs to give herself comfort, but rather to keep herself immersed in the intoxication of grief that she had discovered after the failure of her first love. This was an experience she had in common with most lovers who have suffered loss or betrayal; a masochistic ordeal where pain becomes pleasurable. The trauma leads us to create a tent for wise thoughts in which we sit to philosophize about our life that is passing by outside" (62).
Finally, the author originally published this in Arabic with some English and then actually rewrote it to work in English which is unusual and really paid off. She uses common Arabic words and offers definitions that appear at the bottom of the page.
This is a fun read with some cultural insights.