Nada Awar Jarrar

I liked the writing of the book but hated the women characters who are almost all very submissive and willing to take backstage to their parents, husbands and finally their children.

This however is a true portrayal of Arab women who mostly accept their fate and make the best of it. They show their strength in unexpected ways and they are always about loving and caring for others.

The story of three woman coming to terms with migration, early marriages, estranged husbands and identity or more so the liquid state of being and feeling home. The stories of the three women are very loosely connected to an image of an actual house in a village on Mount Lebanon. We meet Maysa as a young woman about to give birth to her only daughter and trying to make herself a home in the village. Then there is Aida who returns to Beirut as a young woman to reclaim memories of the Palestinian refugee who was like a father to her and her sisters and has since passed on and finally the saddest character Salwa, living out her last days in far-away Australia with her children around her, half listening to her, and fussing over her. While she retreats to her memories of a home she left as a child-bride herself many decades ago.

We are left with a sense of sadness and a feeling that these women will never stop searching because the home they have lost can never be reclaimed.… (meer)

This is trying to do something very brave, describe the refuge experience without necessarily making it seem to be a place of abject despair. There is hope and ambition in every situation, sometimes that is a small ambition, sometimes it is a dream to be fought for. The people in this book are almost all out of place in some way, the only resident of Beruit is Hannah, and she has also been displaced in her past. There is love, of partners, family, place and home. And there is conflict of all forms, war to domestic conflict features largely.
I'm not certain it entirely succeeds as a work of ficiton, there is a series of events that feels a little too improbable, or is told too superficially to feel entirely likely. It is also a slightly odd group of people, there seems to be little that actually holds them together as friends - we don't really see every day behaviour, we see them all under some degree of stress - so the fact that they would do so much for each other seems slightly unconvicing.
It is told from a number of different perspectives, each chapter following a different individual, and these separate viewpoints combine and wrap around each other to give an impression of the indivudal's past and their present situation.
I also found the manner in which this is written to be difficult to navigate. There are no speech marls, all speech is indicated by a - at the beginning of the line, but the following paragraph can include internal tuought as well as external speech, meaning that it is not always easy to work out what has been said.
It is a brave attempt to show the feeling is displacement extends to more than just the obvious refuges. It challenges attitudes to the displaced populations as well. Most of us come from somewhere else, it;s just a question of when we were last displaced.… (meer)

Un joli petit livre qui se lit comme on laisse fondre un bonbon doux-amer sur la langue. Plus qu’un roman, ce sont trois nouvelles, trois histoires de femmes qui ne se connaissent pas mais qu’une maison, habitée ou vue un jour, relit sans qu’elles le sachent. Trois femmes que l’on suit dans leur quête de racines, d’identité. L’une cherche sa place et la juste distance par rapport à son histoire familiale, la seconde est une immigrée qui se cherche entre Liban et Occident, et la troisième se souvient de sa vie itinérante et de sa famille éparpillée dans le monde.
Un joli livre, d’une écriture poétique, qui suggère plus qu’elle ne dit, qui caresse ses personnages et leur donne une portée symbolique. Qu’il soit question de migration économique ou politique, ou tout simplement d’histoire familiale se dissolvant dans les changements de mode de vie, chacun tente au mieux de se réconcilier avec son héritage culturel, au prix d’illusions et d’espérances parfois déçues.… (meer)