Amazon.com info for 'Girls of Riyadh: A Novel: Rajaa Alsanea'

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Back to reviews and details of Girls of Riyadh: A Novel: Rajaa Alsanea

Amazon.com reviews:

Rating: 5 Summary: Best Seller Material
Comment It's hardly Sex and the City, but by Saudi standards The Girls of Riyadh is a bombshell. The fictional tale of the loves, dreams and disappointments of four young women in the capital has, not surprisingly, drawn criticism in a country where women are not supposed to date or have a love life until married. More striking, however, is the degree of support being voiced for 24-year-old author Rajaa al-Sanie and her first novel. In the novel, Sadeem's husband divorces her because she's too sexually bold for his liking. Qamra discovers soon after her wedding that her husband is in love with a Japanese woman. Mashael's boyfriend cannot marry her because her mother is American. Only Lamis finds true and lasting love. The Girls of Riyadh was published in September in Lebanon, the most liberal of Arab countries, and is going into its third printing. In Saudi Arabia, where the sexes are strictly segregated, authorities haven't decided whether to approve its sale, but pirated editions are circulating in photocopy form. Author Mariam Abdel-Karim al-Bukhari, writing in the newspaper Al Riyadh, said she hasn't read the book but nonetheless believes the title "is hurtful to the girls in our country." She wants al-Sanie to change it, or "issue an apology to the girls of Riyadh." But glowing praise comes from Ghazi al-Qusaibi, a renowned Saudi author who is also the kingdom's labour minister. He calls it "a work that deserves to be read. I expect a lot from this author." Educator Hussah al-Ghanem agrees. "I support her 100 per cent," she said. "People should talk about the positive and negative aspects of their society." Al-Sanie, fresh out of dental school, is a petite brunette who wears an Islamic head scarf, like virtually all Saudi women. She says a few of al-Sanie's friends have cut her off because "They don't want to hurt their marriage prospects by associating with a bold friend." Her biggest supporter is her family. "Before the book was published, I asked Rajaa, `Are you willing to go the extra mile for this?'" said her brother, Ahmed. "She's not married yet, and society doesn't forgive or forget." The book, which isn't available in English, is told in the form of weekly e-mails from a female narrator to Internet subscribers in Saudi Arabia, portrays four women whose stories are based on true-life ones that al-Sanie says she has heard at weddings, in school and at women's gatherings. Many in the Arab world are comparing it to Sex and the City, the TV series about four young women in New York City, though there is so sex in The Girls of Riyadh, only emotions. The novel opens with Qamra marrying Rashed in a lavish ceremony, having already been advised by her ultra-conservative mother not to consummate her marriage on her wedding night lest she be judged "easy." The couple moves to the United States, only for Qamra to discover that Rashed married her to appease his parents, who wouldn't let him marry his real love, a Japanese woman. Rashed soon divorces Qamra and sends her home pregnant. To protect its reputation, her family bans her from returning to college or going out much with her girlfriends. Meanwhile, Sadeem sleeps with Walid after their marriage contract is signed but before she moves in with him. Shocked at her "boldness" and interest in sex, Walid divorces her. She develops a phone relationship with a Saudi man and would like him for a husband, but being a divorcee makes that impossible and she ends up marrying a cousin. Mashael is the half-American who once broke the ban against women driving by dressing as a man, renting a car and driving her girlfriends around the city. She and her boyfriend, Faisal, meet at a mall and fall in love but don't marry because his mother doesn't want a half-American for a daughter-in-law. And finally there's Lamis, who marries Nizar and finds happiness because unlike the other three women, she has let her head govern her heart and made sure he is right for her. Al-Sanie says she wrote the book to highlight issues that society denies. "I didn't distort the country's reputation. I wrote about humanity here," she said. "I wanted to show that both men and women are victims of society." Al-Sanie says that among many readers who have e-mailed her is a man who got the book from his divorced daughter. "He told me it made him cry and made him realize what women go through," she said. "He decided that his daughter will not live the traditional life of a divorcee."

Rating: 5 Summary: More then chicklit in a hajib
Comment Who among those of us in the West would have thought that four women in Saudi Arabia could go through so many of the same things that we do. Dreaming of the right guy, heartbreak and romance, professional aspirations. It's all in this extremely well written and highly enjoyable first book by a young dental student named Rajaa Alsanea. Written in the form of a weekly email to a listserv group, we become highly acquainted with this foursome, childhood friends from the upper class of Riyadh. Each woman is unique, and you'll soon become friends with each of them.

Thank you, Rajaa, for your ability to transform women whom we often perceive as merely burka-bound beings into real human, feeling women! Hopefully, there will be time within your professional demands to either revisit these same women's lives, or delight us with a completely new story. But please keep writing!

Rating: 4 Summary: author succeeds in her mission
Comment I just finished a marathon of new novels from the "the Middle East" and finished up with this bonbon, a sweet dessert to follow the grim, rich, complex, high faluting Wolves of the Crescent Moon, and Snow, the tragic epic of A Thousand Splendid Suns,and so on. Coming down off of these fine "socially responsible" books, which tackle poverty and class, identity, good vs evil, faith, massive cultural schisms, the acute sufferings of average women, along with the other usual big existential questions was like coming down off Conrad, Dickens, Bronte, Atwood and Hardy to relax and enjoy an unpreachy Jane Austen.
"Girls" is a narrow often comic, fluffy - and yet somewhat moving - "chick litty" story of the love lives of the wealthy and relatively coddled. Okay, it's "light", but it has its place in literature and I have deep admiration and respect for the courage of the author to write it (it is censored in Saudi Arabia and the author has to put up with severe and probably scary condemnation by those who think a woman's inner private life should not ever be revealed). No, of course there are not graphic sex scenes so it might make you impatient, but remember to even allude in writing to the fact that men and women have sex or that a boy might be gay is forbidden.
. And I kept thinking (as a western reader who knows a lot of Saudi women and men but only as visitors to the USA), "you go, girl! Blow away the stereotypes!". To educate the ignorant world about the contemporary inner lives and daily life-truths of Saudi women was a goal of the author, as she writes in her forward. I think she succeeds within the confines of her novel in showing the diverse personalities, neuroses, dreams and fears of real women, in that range of the young, educated, hip and rich, rich rich.
I must confess, however, that if I were Saudi and read this I would be bored, and if it were the same women but Americans and living say, in Seattle or Manhattan I'd be bored by their stories, just as I yawned at Sex in the City. So...that means the charm of this novel, for me, was learning and opening my mind about culture, rather than its literary merits. (I don't read "chick lit" normally, not because I am misogynist, but..well I go for the deep stuff). I know this gifted, brave author is perfectly capably of writing in deeper genres and could write thrillers and so on, if she chooses.
A few of my favorite scenes: Men naughtily rushing into the women's section of a wedding before it is allowed, frantically "recording female faces and bodies on the hard drives of their memory banks" as sexily clad women scramble to cover themselves with any kind of cloth available - including a table cloth. Or the scenes aboard jets on their way to Europe or America, with Saudi women (and men) rushing to the bathrooms the second they have left the boundaries of the kingdom to change into western attire (and in reverse, on the way home). As my husband says, "it's like a job interview!". And another scene, of a tender-hearted gentle male lover who respects and adores women (or at least, the one he is in love with). And I love the ravishing romantic Arab poetry before each chapter.
I put "Girls" in the ranks with Zaatar Days, Henna Nights: Adventures, Dreams, and Destinations Across the Middle East, as a good book written from the authentic, female perspective, and an entertaining cheery way to dash expectations and misconceptions about the living modern women - and men - of the Middle East.
And now, after the breather, back to the grim high brow tragedies.
~ by Lesley Thomas, author of arctic novel Flight of the Goose

Rating: 1 Summary: Uninteresting, disappointing
Comment I read the first 50 pages or so and then started skimming. The translation was frequently awkward and I found it impossible to connect with, or maintain an interest in, the characters. The book was also boring and centered around the usual blah-blah that apparently should interest all women: cheating, dishonest men, bad marriages, betrayals and conniving family.

As I am already quite familiar with Arab culture, I didn't pick up the book to *GASP* over revealing discoveries about the lives of Saudi vs. Western women. My main goal was diversion, and this book failed.

Rating: 5 Summary: a delightful book
Comment glory-shines! soul-blossom! what splendo-bliss euphoriated me, deluged me, smote me with scarlet as i plunged amid this books mad delecto! i immersed myself in its characters, swarmed amid its fiber and riled as i ran through its pages. i wept jail-tears when waliid broke his engagement to sadeem, i vexploded in razor-rage when i learned that faisal's family barred michelle's marriage to him, i spit venom when i read that gamarah had been cheated on, rogued, her love-life torn, her soul-bliss shattered, all the horror-freaks arising from the knife-ocean to ransack her blithe in shred. i shrunk into the shade-forest as i reminded myself that love evades us, that love taunts us, that true love is as rare as those blithe-diamonds amidst desert, those sparklo-falls radiating in astonishmento, that cloud-wonder wholly effecting the reason.

this is a delightful book. i found out about it by wandering through websites on middle east topics and i thought that this would a great book to help out with my arabic studies. to my astonishment the english version is radically different from the arabic version. and i read somewhere that the english translator really didn't do anything, but that rajaa herself did almost all of the work. whole paragraphs in the arabic version are omitted in the english. in any case this is still a delightful read. this book took tremendous courage to write as i'm sure rajaa feared greatly the reprisal that such a bold move might have on saudi society. this is also a wholly honest book. rajaa doesn't sugar-coat reality and reminds us just how rare true love is. here's to you, rajaa, may true love find you.

author of Lorelei Pursued,
Wrestles with God