The writer Rabih Alamuddin may not have succeeded in distributing the topics and details of his novel, and this lies in exhausting the reader with this number of titles and literary quotations.
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The novel “An Unnecessary Woman” by Rabih Alamuddin.
Hold on to “AAn Unnecessary Woman” by Rabih Alameddine To find a new and motivating headline, “An Unnecessary Woman.” She looks closely at the cover, and finds a woman who is mostly out of the picture, and is indicated by part of the background of her hair dyed blue. She dives into the pages, and finds a broken, lonely and isolated woman, the same narrator, Alia Saleh, a seventy-year-old Lebanese woman who lives in her apartment in Beirut, telling the story of an exhausted city, whose sides are tired of the war between its children…
The narrator begins to narrate the story of her long life, and its details, and deliberately addresses the reader to draw his attention to follow the story from the first words, and perhaps to entice him to continue the story. It is an attractive technique to make the recipient a partner in the work, interacting with the narrator, and sympathizing with her.
The story train kicks off when narrator Alia Salih reveals that she had dyed her hair blue without even realizing it: “You might say I was thinking regarding other things when I dyed my hair blue. Two glasses of wine didn’t help me focus. Let me explain.” (page 9).
And then the waterfall of narration breaks out from a place that is sometimes intimate, and another that is hostile in many stations, regarding the beautiful Beirut, from whose heart the first shots were fired declaring a savage, violent and destructive civil war, so that this meek city became a city of killing, revenge, panic, hunger and destruction, so it produced defeated, lost and failed fictional characters in Love and in life and inter-social relations. Unnecessary characters in times of war and peace. It ends with the release of the boxes containing the rotting translated books in the dampness of the Beiruti home, and the decision to pursue translation following fifty years of continuing this mysterious job.
in the cash function
Criticism and critics sometimes give an aesthetic space to the text, the writer may not pay attention to it, or intend much of what he wrote, but deepening the text’s semantics and searching for its hidden things makes the text more aesthetic and creative. I think this is one of the roles and functions of criticism. Regarding the novel we are talking regarding, I went through more than one review of it, following I finished reading it, and I found beautiful words and praise for it, and it is the novel that won the “Femina” award for foreign fiction in the year 2016. I thought a lot regarding the criteria and specifications that qualify a work to reach it. Winning an award for a novel. I tried hard to find justifications for the novel winning this award, and I failed. Incidentally, I am not familiar with the writer Rabie Alameddine at all. This is what liberated me to write my critical opinion, and criticism is subject, whether we like it or not, to social relations, friendships, and so on.
Has reading turned from pleasure into suffering and retribution?
Rabih Alamuddin forces the reader to make a great effort as he moves between the many pages and the few events in the novel, so he remains waiting for what can motivate him to continue.
However, the writer – for reasons I don’t know – refrains from tempting the reader with interesting events that make him relate to the narration. He colludes with the narrator, and conveys to her or from her this amount of frustration and despair from the social and political realities, so the reader feels as if he is submissive to the area of disgust that is happening today. This grumbling extends to the cultural reality, as we find the educated narrator, the translator, criticizing some of the modern works of fiction. The narrator, Alia Saleh, is absorbed in books and titles, and she is the translator of dozens of novels that she used to translate from English and French into Arabic. But she does not publish these translations, but buries them in boxes, and buries the boxes in the bathroom “I have never published my translations … When I finish my last revision, I leave the manuscript for a few days, and then re-read it all at once, if I am satisfied with it, put it in a box , and tape it shut, and attach the original books to the box from the outside, so that it is easy to return to them. I store the box in the maid’s room, or now in the bathroom… Create and bury” p. 119.
The narrator expresses her disappointment with the interest of the Arab world in literature and reading, so she does not publish what she is translating. About literature in itself, so what regarding translated literature?, p. 119.
The culture of the narrator or the culture of the writer
The writer Rabih Alamuddin may not have been successful in distributing the topics and details of his novel, and this lies in exhausting the reader with this number of titles and literary quotations, so that the reader is faced with a large influx of them, which makes him, at many stations, take a negative stance from this excessive filling, and the unjustified citations. Which is not necessary, but the definition of the writer’s broad culture. Although the story and theme of the novel are beautiful and innovative, Alamuddin was able to reconcile the events of the novel, which talks regarding an educated, isolated, fearful and rebellious woman, who lived the events of the Lebanese Civil War, its tragedies and details, and the immersion in books, their titles, the names of their authors and their personalities. As if it were a novel that aims to collect the sayings of writers and poets, and to refer to their lives and the way they died.
The novel lacks the element of suspense, as it makes the reader feel bored, and he finds it very difficult to reach the end, because the idea is the same, and the writer was able to communicate it to the reader. But he tries to complicate it as much as possible. A withdrawn, introverted woman who carries feelings and emotions within herself. She is a translator, translating literary works, and then burying her work. Afraid to go out into society.
The scenes in the story are tedious and long, and the reader feels alienated and lonely, and sometimes you may feel remorse for choosing a book in which all this emptiness and dispersion is created. The narrative thread is intermittent, and it revolves around the same idea. The dialogues are devoid of creative ideas and opinions that the writer conveys to the characters, except for the opinions of writers and writers, whom the writer overstuffed on every page, and sometimes between every two sentences.
The characters in the novel are dispersed, and bear various psychological complexes. The place is the narrator’s house, and the city of Beirut. Time extends from the civil war to the post-war era.
The writer was able to include quite a few events and stories that color his novel, as long as he talks regarding the time of war and its followingmath, and the events, ideas and changes that both times carried on the political, social and intellectual levels, which makes the story more brilliant and enjoyable. If writing is devoid of the pleasure of telling and storytelling, then what is the philosophy of its existence and function?
A tale without end
The writer insists until the end on presenting his information, culture, and wide readings, so the narrator says on page 310 and the last: I can try to capture Cozy’s polished English in Arabic… Should I be Hardian or the judge?
I’m going to use a waterproof ink – a dry ink, not one that runs.
She quotes William Shakespeare in Sonnet 65, “So my love remains radiant with light, and it is in black ink.”
Here the novel and the tale ends.
In the end, this reading may open the discussion on literary works, poetry and novels, the method of approaching them, and how to reach the lists that make them a candidate to win and achieve awards. This reading is a critical opinion regarding the novel, which may or may not be correct.
