Nearly five crisis-packed decades in the lives of traditionally reared Egyptian women—complete with all the makings of a possible bestseller: a smooth-as-silk narration, a graceful approximation of the ritual concerns and courtesies of another culture, a few fightin' female hearts within the bonds of womanly repression, and the inevitable scandals, secrets, and forbidden loves within an upper-caste Cairo household. Heading the women's household of Dr. Ibraham Rasheed is his stately mother, Amira, whose firm upholding of the old ways of complete female subservience has had something to do with her past- -an early trauma not revealed until the close. In 1945, when the story begins, Ibraham, distraught at the death of his young wife in childbirth, curses God—but even more terrible is not being able to satisfy his dead father by siring a son. Ibraham adopts a baby boy, but fathers only daughters—among them his favorites, Yasmina, by his blond English wife Alice, and Camelia by his first wife. Meantime, Ibraham is personal physician to King Farouk, forced to abdicate in 1952, and is jailed for treason, while Amira raises and presides over her women, arranging marriages and comforting; eventually, it is she who not only obtains Ibraham's release but exposes a family enemy. Along the way, Yasmina, in a brutal and loveless marriage, is banished because—in a heroic effort to save the family—she is raped and thereby ``dishonors'' that family; and Camelia, sterile because of a face-saving operation, studies dancing with the famous Dahiba (another banished victim of ``honor''). Yasmina travels to California, becomes a doctor, marries, divorces, and finds true love, while at home there's a cholera epidemic, tragic and violent deaths, sad and happy pairings, and a few valiant stirrings of the female wish for liberation. A warmly gossipy family tale in an exotic setting—and, like most of Wood's novels (The Dreaming, 1991, etc.), spun off with ease and apparent pleasure in the telling. (First printing of 100,000)
Pub Date: June 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-679-41579-3
Page Count: 576
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1993
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
The fine Israeli writer Yehoshua (Open Heart, 1996, etc.) makes a lengthy journey into the year 999, the end of the first millennium. Indeed, it is the idea of a great journey that is the heart of the story here. Ben Attar, a Moroccan Jewish merchant has come a long distance to France to seek out his nephew and former partner Abulafia. Ben Attar, the nephew, and a third partner, the Muslim Abu Lutfi, had once done a lucrative business importing spices and treasures from the Atlas Mountains to eager buyers in medieval Europe. But now their partnership has been threatened by a complex series of events, with Abulafia married to a pious Jewish widow who objects vehemently to Ben Attar’s two wives. Accompanied by a Spanish rabbi, whose cleverness is belied by his seeming ineffectualness; the rabbi’s young son, Abu Lutfi; the two wives; a timorous black slave boy, and a crew of Arab sailors, the merchant has come to Europe to fight for his former partnership. The battle takes place in two makeshift courtrooms in the isolated Jewish communities of the French countryside, in scenes depicted with extraordinary vividness. Yehoshua tells this complex, densely layered story of love, sexuality, betrayal and “the twilight days, [when] faiths [are] sharpened in the join between one millennium and the next” in a richly allusive, languorous prose, full of lengthy, packed sentences, with clauses tumbling one after another. De Lange’s translation is sensitively nuanced and elegant, catching the strangely hypnotic rhythms of Yehoshua’s style. As the story draws toward its tragic conclusion—but not the one you might expect—the effect is moving, subtle, at once both cerebral and emotional. One of Yehoshua’s most fully realized works: a masterpiece.
Pub Date: Jan. 19, 1999
ISBN: 0-385-48882-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1998
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
