EIGHT MONTHS ON GHAZZAH STREET: Hilary Mantel

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The Pakistani neighbor of the protagonist, Frances Shore, tries to reassure her by explaining that they don't really stone adulteresses any more -- they throw a few token stones then shoot her. Yet, almost immediately following this exchange, Fairfax shows Frances a photo of his wife, who he describes as a "giantess," a woman who married him only because she could walk down the aisle in high heels rather than "shuffling up the aisle in gym shoes and bending her knees.

Further discussion reveals that one of their female British expat friends who is being divorced by her British husband (for having an affair) is now living in poverty with her children. For their own reasons they live in a flat rather than in the compound with the other ex-pats working for the company. Mantel was so masterful in evoking a suffocating environment that the suspense soa(u)red halfway into claustrophobia. Though overwhelmingly written the past tense, little bits of present tense – sometimes a single sentence in the middle of a paragraph - would occur for no apparent reason. This ersatz-Fitzgerald mix of moralizing and mirror-looking (Jay McInerney shook and poured the shaker first) is very 80's—and in Tartt's strenuous version already seems dated, formulaic.Yasmin and Samira, western-educated but strong defenders of Islam, tell her the apartment belongs to a powerful Saudi man who's installed his mistress there. La tensione generale quindi non smette di crescere e nasce un intrigo anche in questo libro che sembra al confine tra romanzo e memoir, privo del ricco intreccio romanzesco dei precedenti. While there is not a great deal of plot – apart from the something nasty in the attic plot – Mantel’s story is well worth reading for seeing the cultural differences and how Westerners cope (or, often, don’t cope) with them. She also wrote A Change of Climate, A Place of Greater Safety, Eight Months on Ghazzah Street, An Experiment in Love, The Giant, O'Brien, Fludd, Beyond Black, Every Day Is Mother's Day, Vacant Possession, and a memoir, Giving Up the Ghost.

None of them really want to be where they are – but have become trapped by the lure of good money, which for those with children back at home in boarding school becomes harder to turn down.If, like myself, you were wondering, The Handmaid's Tale was first published in 1985 and is dystopian in nature. There is the boredom and paranoia resulting from the narrator being confined to the four walls of her apartment because her husband accepted a contract in Saudi Arabia, and she, as a woman, isn’t allowed to work there. There’s been another bit of a hiatus here, I am suddenly really struggling to get anything done on the blog at all.

Frances and Yasmin become friends, more because there is little alternative, though they later become friends with Samira, the wife of the Arab man Frances is not allowed to speak to. Questi elementi di partenza e la narrazione che produce quei sentimenti che dicevo prima sono presentati soprattutto in un racconto in terza persona, principalmente dal punto di vista di Frances (ma almeno una volta anche da quello di Andrew); però ci sono inserzioni del diario di Frances: «in Africa there was no need to keep a diary to convince yourself you had an interesting life. Adopting a new style of dress was hardly something to complain about, and the fact that men could not speak to me was something of a relief. As in UK, Arab expats or immigrants are intrusive and nosy, so the story is actually about Western expats in Arab countries.She opens as many questions as she answers, leads the reader to think and consider what really is/was happening to the characters such that the end merely makes you think more (if you see what I mean? Andrew and Frances live on Gazzah Street, not in a Western compound, in an apartment building with four flats. As Frances listens to her friend “explain” Islam and the ways of Islamic women, she has food for thought at last, but not in the way she expected. Then Rooney elaborates: "She tries to pronounce this in a way that communicates several things: apology, painful embarrassment, some additional pained embarrassment that serves to ironise and dilute the painful kind, a sense that she knows she will be forgiven or is already, a desire not to 'make a big deal.