An Unnecessary Woman

by Rabih Alameddine

Paperback, 2012

Status

Available

Genres

General Fiction

All Topics

Fiction

Description

"Aaliya Sohbi lives alone in her Beirut apartment, surrounded by stockpiles of books. Godless, fatherless, childless, and divorced, Aaliya is her family's 'unnecessary appendage.' Every year, she translates a new favorite book into Arabic, then stows it away. The thirty-seven books that Aaliya has translated over her lifetime have never been read-- by anyone. After overhearing her neighbors, 'the three witches,' discussing her too-white hair, Aaliya accidentally dyes her hair too blue. In this breathtaking portrait of a reclusive woman's late-life crisis, readers follow Aaliya's digressive mind as it ricochets across visions of past and present Beirut. Colorful musings on literature, philosophy, and art are invaded by memories of the Lebanese Civil War and Aaliya's own volatile past. As she tries to overcome her aging body and spontaneous emotional upwellings, Aaliya is faced with an unthinkable disaster that threatens to shatter the little life she has left" --… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member brenzi

”You could say I was thinking of other things when I shampooed my hair blue, and two glasses of red wine didn’t help my concentration.”

And so we are introduced to Beirut resident, 72-year-old Aaliya Saleh, bookstore owner and, for the past fifty years, translator of important literary works,

or, at least, literary works that are important to her. Her translations are actually books that have already been translated into French and English from their native German, Spanish, Russian, Portuguese or from whatever their native language was. Aaliya then translates the translations into Arabic. She has been storing these translations away for all these years, unseen by anyone else. These literary marvels all impact her life and, therefore, her story. And Aaliya passes their wisdom on to the reader in bits and pieces as she tries to describe this city that she both loves and hates.

Her descriptions of Beirut, during and after its long civil war are vivid and hellishly gruesome, but it’s her adroit observations, fueled by her extensive reading, that really stand out.

”My books show me what it’s like to live in a reliable country where you flick on a switch and a bulb is guaranteed to shine and remain on, where you know that cars will stop at red lights and that those traffic lights will not cease working a couple of times a day. Compared to the Middle East…Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Macondo is more predictable. Dickens’ Londoners are more trustworthy than the Lebanese. Beirut and its denizens are famously and infamously unpredictable. Every day is an adventure…When trains run on time…when a dial tone sounds as soon as you pick up a receiver, does life become too predictable? With this essential reliability, are Germans bored? Does that explain The Magic Mountain? Is life less thrilling if your neighbors are rational, if they don’t bomb your power stations whenever they feel you need to be admonished? Is it less rousing if they don’t rattle your windows and nerves with indiscriminate sonic booms just because they can?” (Page 52)

Aaliya has led a lonely, solitary life, for the most part and she’s quite bitter about life in all its phases. Married at a young age to a “Freudian dyslexic” who could provide her with no sexual satisfaction and who announced unexpectedly, “you are divorced,” she lost her best friend, Hannah, to an untimely death over forty years ago. So to fill her empty hours she has her books and she is remarkably well read. The fact that over 80 books and authors are mentioned, some in great depth, make this an ultimate book about books and, therefore, irresistible. Add to that the fact that the prose is absolutely stunning and I’m scratching my head to figure out why it took me so long to get into this book. I have to think it had to be me and the first person narrative, which was quite jarring and took some getting used to. But get used to it I did and by the mid-point I was deeply engrossed. The ending was pitch perfect, maybe more satisfying than any book I’ve read. Highly recommended.

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LibraryThing member EBT1002

I don't usually operate in the realm of quarter-points, but this novel is better than a 4. Still, I'm not quite ready to say it's one of my favorite reads of the year (which would define a 4.5 or above). It's delightful and I will likely go purchase a copy so that I can read it again when I want

to.

Aaliya, a divorced woman in her 70s, lives alone in her very nice flat in Beirut where she reads voraciously. She also dedicates each year to the careful translation of one work of literature into Arabic. No one is allowed to read these translations (no one even knows she does this work!) but the boxes containing her translations are carefully stowed away. As Aaliya's memories weave through the past several decades in her beloved city of Beirut, her efforts to define herself and her place in the world weave through the literature she has also loved. A testament to the power of literature to lend meaning to a life, this novel is also a testament to the power of human connection even while it validates the socially isolated path Aaliya has chosen.

There are some beautiful passages, one of my favorite being this.
"As someone living alone, as an aging woman, the technological discovery I love most is the electric clock, though with Beirut's electricity, I should say the battery-operated clock. Do you have any idea how much anxiety those old clocks induced? Ticktock, you're all alone in an empty apartment. Ticktock, the world outside is going to come and get you. Ticktock, you're not getting any younger, are you? Give me a tranquilizer, please.

The ticktock tattooing of the march of time.

The ticktock of the tiny object full of gears suffocating all existence, wringing life out of life.

After that wonderful discovery, the clock's hands still turned in the same direction -- it's called clockwise, for all you youngsters -- time still marched forward, but miraculously, its heartbeat, its ominous announcement, was reduced to a meek buzz."

Of course, there is also her wonderful commentary on her own unreliability:
"I'm not suggesting that I'm consciously dissembling. But to paraphrase the ever-paraphraseable Freud, who said something to the effect that when you speak about the past you lie with every breath you take, I will say this:
When you write about the past, you lie with each letter, with every grapheme, including the goddamn comma."

As I look over these passages that I marked, I believe they fall far short of capturing Aaliya's wonderful narrative voice. So I say just go get this book and read it.

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LibraryThing member lit_chick

"I long ago abandoned myself to a blind lust for the written word. Literature is my sandbox. In it I play, build my forts and castles, spend glorious time. It is the world outside the box that gives me trouble." (6)

Aaliya Saleh is a blue-haired, reclusive, septuagenarian living alone in her Beirut

apartment. Fatherless, godless, childless, and divorced, Aalyia is to her family and to society an unnecessary woman. Covetous of her spacious apartment, her mother and half-brothers oscillate between threatening her with eviction, terrorizing her, and ignoring her. But Aaliya stays put, even as the Lebanese Civil War rages around her, threatening all that she loves about her city. She abandons herself to literature, and every year, on the first of January, begins a new translation of a book into Arabic. Over a period of fifty years, Aaliya has translated thirty-seven books: "I'll be sitting at my desk and suddenly I don't wish my life to be any different. I am where I need to be. My heart distends with delight. I feel sacred." (109)

An Unnecessary Woman is beautifully written, Aaliya herself unforgettable. I particularly enjoyed her visions of Beirut, past and present – a subject which Alameddine has inspired me to explore further. And I love the idea of allowing the principles found in great literature to be the guiding influence in one’s life. But I think for all of her sass and bravado, Aaliya was a sad, even angry, woman – and I empathize with her very human yearning for what might have been.

"No loss is felt more keenly than the loss of what might have been. No nostalgia hurts as much as nostalgia for things that never existed." (155)

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LibraryThing member Smiler69

When I picked up this book on Monday, I thought I might be in the mood for just this sort of thing, having seen another LTers glowing comments on it, and then the book summary itself convincing me completely I was in for a good time. The narrator Aaliya Saleh is a 72 year-old Lebanese woman who's

lived all her life in Beirut. Though she was married off at 16 'to the first unsuitable suitor who came along', she ended up divorced by her impotent husband and childless 4 years later, rejected by her family and all but friendless, but always sustained by her great passion for literature, which also led her to develop a passion for music. The novel is told as a kind of memoir where she holds a long meandering monologue about herself, her youth, the civil war years, her current situation, the books she's read, the music she's listened to, and explains why she's the better part of her life translating 37 foreign-language books into Arabic starting from French or English translations (translations of translations), then putting the finished text in a box and sealing it away. On the day she starts her narration, her oldest half brother has just dropped by with their elderly insane mother, demanding that Aaliya take her in and take care of her, a task she narrowly escapes, but an incident that leaves he shaken nonetheless.

From the outset, the book had all the elements which should have made for a very appealing reading experience, but very early on, I found myself repelled for all kinds of reasons which I am not sure I can detail without sounding petty. I started listening to the audio version, and found that narrated out loud, Aaliya came off sounding like an insufferable literary snob, with continual quotes from books and philosophers (which should have appealed, but didn't) and a strong tendency to complain about everything and everybody. I though if I switched to paper or an ebook edition, I might find her interesting rather than disdainful and annoying, and probably take lots of notes along the way about all these great books I should add to my wishlist and tbr.

So I switched to the kindle version, but still could not get comfortable with the novel. For one thing, I wasn't buying Aaliya at all as a character, and just seem to hear the author's voice coming through loudly, very much a male voice to me. For another, I was displeased with the narrator's conversational tone, in which she constantly addresses the reader directly ('don't you think that's annoying? I certainly do') and makes too many apologies for veering off course. In short, I was too annoyed to enjoy the ride, and decided life was too short to spend it with an unlikeable 72 year-old trying very hard to be ornery like some of her favourite authors. Unconvincing, and pointless is what kept beeping in my head, and I dropped it. But, since I'd read almost three-quarters of the book and had truly made a big effort of time, money and patience to stick to it, I decided I was counting it toward my first 75 books, much as I did with Hygiène de l'assassin. I do not want to suggest I hated this novel anywhere as much as I did the latter, and I know beyond a doubt that most readers will find great satisfaction here. I felt sure I would love this book, and it certainly had all the right ingredients, but ultimately I think Alameddine and I would not have a great time having tea together. For one thing, I happen to like putting milk in my excellent Earl Grey blends (a reference you will understand once you've read the book). I'm okay with the fact I'll probably be among a very small minority that is not completely won over by this one.

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LibraryThing member TimBazzett

Rabih Alameddine's exquisitely crafted novel, AN UNNECESSARY WOMAN, is a book to read slowly and savor, a book for lovers of literature and books. Because it is filled with literary allusions, quotations from authors both famous and obscure, authors from many countries whose works have been

translated into many languages, from Greek and Roman classics, Russian and French masters of fiction - ah, what the hell, the book is simply rich with language and literature and the solace, wisdom and comfort to be found in books.

The story itself is deceptively simple, and not a whole lot happens. It traces the life of septuagenarian Aaliya Saleh, a retired bookseller, divorced from an "impotent insect" of a man. She has lived in the same Beirut apartment for more than fifty years and has seen wars and revolutions and insurgencies come and go multiple times. But she lives frugally and carefully, surrounded by her books and memories. Her real work, the work she lives for, is translating favorite books into Arabic, using English and French translations. Her final product, then, is a translation of translations - a couple removes from the original work. She works at her own pace, translating one book per year, beginning anew with each new year.

Aaliya herself is a character to treasure; because she is a divorcee, she considers herself an 'unnecessary woman,' but she perseveres in her own private world, disowned and scorned by her own mother and half-siblings, she took comfort in the friendship of Hannah, another unique and special character. But now she is alone, grappling with the problems of physical frailty and aging, as well as the aging infrastructure and utilities of her apartment building with intermittent electricity and water. Books are her comfort, her solace, her life. But she has little patience for modern writers.

"Most of the books published these days consist of a series of whines followed by an epiphany. I call these memoirs and confessional novels happy tragedies. We shall overcome and all that. I find them sentimental and boring."

Aaliya says she is not religious, but she is not an atheist either -

"... I believe in gods. Like Ricardo Reis, aka Fernando Pessoa [her favorite poet], I am a pantheist ... I worship ... at the shrine of my writers. I am in large measure a Pessoan."

Of her dear friend, Hannah, she says -

"... she kept me company, but she left me undisturbed. We were two solitudes benefiting from a grace that was continuously reinvigorated in each other's presence, two solitudes who nourished each other."

I found myself dog-earing pages throughout this book, and making notes about all the authors she references and quotes - Beckett, Moravia, Calvino, Joseph Roth, Kant, Sebald, Spinoza, Styron, Conrad, Proulx, and more - on and on, in fact. Too many authors to possibly remember, authors that filled the days of her life. And it was a life that knew tragedy and hard times, but Aaliya is a survivor. Books have been her salvation. The ending of the book is a hopeful one. Aaliya Saleh is a woman to remember, a necessary fictional character.

Bravo, Mr. Alameddine. AN UNNECESSARY WOMAN is a book for booklovers everywhere to savor and treasure. Highly recommended.

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LibraryThing member Cariola

I know I'm in the minority, but I found this book pretentious and dull. It's pretty much a nonstop monologue--a 72-year old woman rambling on about her life in Beirut, past and present. Divorced, childless, and estranged from her family, Aaliyah begins to translate a novel into Arabic every January

1--but no one has ever read any of the 37 novels she has translated and stores in her bathroom. She throws in a plethora of international literary references and her opinions of various writers along the way. Frankly, I just didn't find her or her life of much interest. I'm not surprised that one of the books mentioned as being similar is The Elegance of the Hedgehog--a book I really detested and ultimately couldn't finish.

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LibraryThing member jwhenderson

Sometimes the voice of the narrator enchants the reader with her life and that of those around her. That is what happens in Rabih Alameddine's captivating novel. The narrator is a woman named Aaliya. She is a book-lover in her seventies who runs a book store and translates books. She is an

obsessive translator of books, a vocation that was spurred by reading about a criminal, Raskolnikov, in a book, Crime and Punishment, that she remembered as "the first adult novel I read, or the first with a fully developed theme." (p 102) That memory is one that she shares in one of her many asides that in this case last for several pages and included a discussion of the translating abilities of Constance Garnett, the Edwardian woman who introduce the English-speaking public to the wonders of Russian literature.

This is a book made up of her asides which intersperse her story about a life lived in Beirut. Beirut becomes a character in the novel as she shares her love for the city. This love does not prevent her from warning the reader that, "Every Beiruti of a certain age has learned that on leaving for a walk you should never be too sure of returning home, not only because something might happen to you personally, but also because your home might cease to exist." (p 175) There are other characters who drift into and out of the story including her friends Fadia, Joumana, and Marie-Therese. Most important in several senses is Ahmad who enters her bookshop as a young boy and matures on the streets and in the battles of Beirut city.

The most interesting of her friends for this reader are her books. Anything and everything brings her back to her books. Nostalgia for the city of Beirut reminds her of the smell of jasmine floating in, the colors and patterns of sheets in the dark" which leads her to Proust:
"But then I feel nostalgia for the walks by Swann's Way, as well as by Guermantes Way, for how Charles Kinbote surprises John Shade while he's taking a bath, for how Anna Karenina sits in a train." (p 129)
She tosses off one-liners with the gift of a literary charmer. You may have noticed how she added references to Nabokov and Tolstoy while waxing about Proust. These and other riffs on the life of reading through quotations and asides warm the heart of any reader and challenge him as well. Her favorite book is Marguerite Yourcenar's Memoirs of Hadrian and I could not think of a better choice.

She also loves music and Chopin becomes another character as his music wafts through her mind and life, especially when performed by the great Sviatoslav Richter. Yet she is mainly a homebody, "No matter where I've been or how long I've been away, my soul begins to tingle whenever I approach my apartment." This is a place that is no longer new and cold in the winter but it is warmed by the heart of Aaliya the book-loving translator. She says near the end of her story that "In order to live, I have to blind myself to my infinitesimal dimensions in this infinite universe." (p 277) Nonetheless she is not "unnecessary" as the reader finds that laughter and tears and wonder are all part and parcel of the wonder of reading about her magical life.

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LibraryThing member tangledthread

Aaliya, a 72 year old agnostic, agoraphobic, autodidact has resided in the same apartment in Beirut for around 50 years. She came to the apartment when first married at 16 and stayed there when her impotent husband divorced her within a few years. Over the years she had endured the long siege of

the Lebanese civil war as well as sieges by her half-brothers' and mother's attempts to claim her apartment.

Shortly after her divorce, she supported herself as the only employee of a Beiruti bookshop with an absent owner. She occupies her time translating books from English or French to Arabic. True to her obsessive personality, there are rules. She will not translate books originally written in English or French, only those that have been translated from another language, thus she does translations of translations. Her ritual is to begin a new translation with the New Year. But her translations are for herself only. When she is finished, they are boxed up with original book attached to the box and stored in what was the maids room of the apartment. But over 50 years and 30 translations, the maids bathroom has also been pressed into storage space.

The book is written in a stream of consciousness format and begins during the end of year holidays while Aaliya, who has accidentally dyed her white hair blue, is contemplating what she will translate during the coming year. There are three other women in the apartment building who meet daily for coffee on a balcony where Aaliya can over hear them. The blue in her hair was an attempt to make her hair less white based on what she has heard them say about her, a failed attempt at conformity.

Through her stream of conscious writing, Aaliyah references an erudite reading list which she uses to inform us of her understanding of the world. In this male dominated society with no direct connection to a male (her brothers are only half-brothers), no children, and no connection to religion, her life has no meaning for these relationships are the things that define a woman within that society. She refers to herself as an unnecessary woman based on a quote from a Nazi who spared a Jew whose skills were needed by calling him a "necessary Jew".

In addition to her love of literature, she also has a love of music. Over the years she has had one friend, Hannah, with whom she shared these joys. Hannah was also an "unnecessary woman" by the standards of Lebanese society. There was also a young Palestinian male mentee who came to the bookshop seeking knowledge, but as he reached 18 he joined with the revolutionary forces.

Aaliya's relationship with her mother has been strained through out her life. An encounter with aged, infirm mother causes Aaliya to attempt some resolution to that relationship. This second encounter causes Aaliya to recognize her own mortal fears. When she returns to her apartment to face what at first to be a catastrophe, she finds the resolution to those fears.

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LibraryThing member msf59

“I long ago abandoned myself to a blind lust for the written word. Literature is my sandbox. In it I play, build my forts and castles, spend glorious time.”

“I slipped into art to escape life. I sneaked off into literature.”

“Someone shat in my home. I bought a Kalashnikov.”

“Joy is

the anticipation of joy. Reading a fine book for the first time is as sumptuous as the first sip of orange juice that breaks the fast in Ramadan.”

“How does the old cliché go? When every Arab girl stood in line waiting for God to hand out the desperate-to-get-married gene, I must have been somewhere else, probably lost in a book.”

Aaliya Saleh is a widower, living alone in her Beirut apartment. She is mostly estranged from her family and finds solace in her endless stack of books. She also finds comfort and peace working in a bookstore and translating classic books, for her own pleasure. As she enters her seventies, she begins to muse about her life, her love of literature and the Lebanese Civil War that had rocked her beloved homeland.
This is a beautifully written novel. If the quotes I shared up there seem to be excessive- they are not. I could easily have added many more. I am a book geek after all. I am glad I finally got to this gem and if you have not, please correct that oversight.

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LibraryThing member sleahey

Told in the first person voice of Aaliya, a woman in her 70's in Beirut, this novel contains the musings and recollections of a brilliant, isolated lifetime. A translator and former bookstore manager, Aaliya inhabits a world of literature while war and conflict surround her. Human capacity for

wrongdoing is reflected in her family as well as on the streets of Beirut, and she has withdrawn from any relationships. Alameddine's writing is stunning, and this is a novel to savor.

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LibraryThing member brocade

Do not read unless you are prepared for a single character's ruminations about various authors and writing.

LibraryThing member muddyboy

This book takes place in Beirut, Lebanon and is about an elderly lady who spent her entire life translating great works of literature into her native tongue. The catch is that she never attempts having any of her translations published. She has been abandoned by her family and has great difficulty

connecting with people in general. What is great about this book is the author's grasp of literature. There seem to be hundreds of quotes interspersed throughout from a wide variety of authors and books. They are both thought provoking and relevant, I can certainly see why this book got all the acclaim that it did.

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LibraryThing member brangwinn

This is an INTELLIGENT book, one to read slowly and contemplate the words. As a teacher, I always talked about using “voice” and the voice of Aaliya, a woman in her seventies is clear, concise and belies the title. She is not an unnecessary woman. Married and divorced by the age of 20, her

story is the timeline of the timeline of Beirut’s violent history. Her love of books and her love of Beirut shine through in this story, as many other reviewers have said, as a love letter to literature and Beirut.

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LibraryThing member eenerd

I stopped reading at the part where the guy was popping her blackheads during sex and she loved it. I mean. Seriously. This is way too art fart highbrow, who could possibly think this is going to appeal to a broad audience??? Wanker lit.

LibraryThing member labfs39

Aaliya is a 72-year-old woman living alone in a Beirut apartment surrounded by books and memories. Estranged from her family, divorced from her impotent husband, and retired from her bookstore, Aaliya is friends with solitude. Every New Year's Day she begins translating a new book, and every year

end, she boxes up the translation and stores it in her back room. But Aaliya isn't lonely. She has deep and rich relationships with literature and music that have been her companions throughout her life. Drily humorous and ironic, Aaliya is so well-drawn and lifelike, I feel like I could walk into a Lebanese bookstore and find her reading behind the desk.

An Unnecessary Woman is a book for readers. Almost every page has a reference to an author, book, or composer that sent me Googling down rabbit holes and adding dozens of books to my wish list. Yet, it's not at all pretentious. Aaliya isn't name dropping, she's talking about friends. Whether discussing the art of translation or her process for choosing which book to read next, Aaliya is a kindred spirit for booklovers.

The book is also a depiction of life during the decades-long Lebanese Civil War and an exploration of aging and what it means to live a meaningful life. It's a book that I could reread with pleasure because there are so many layers and the ending is perfect. I'm looking forward to reading more by Alameddine, because if this book is any indication, he could become a favorite author.

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LibraryThing member Dabble58

This is one of those delightful books that makes you stop and want to write down bits of it in order to remember the words forever. The cover reviewer is correct - this book does break your heart - so beware.
The main character is a so-called "unnecessary woman", living in Lebanon during the civil

war. No one seems to want or need her, even her husband. She spends her life translating writers, storing up boxes of gradually bettering translations of the classics and new writers into Arabic.
I loved this complaining, grumbly women. She's 72, but I can identify with her feelings of invisibility and her need for something significant to hang onto. I traveled through this book, gradually coming to dread the end - both because I thought it would end one way (it doesn't) and because I feel I've lost the kind of person I would have loved to have spent afternoons with, discussing literature.
The true pleasure in this book are the selected words of other writers and her wise, cheeky, worldly interpretation of them.
Highly highly recommended. I found myself smiling throughout and weeping near the end. Truly a read to wallow in.

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LibraryThing member streamsong

Aaliva Saleh was an elderly woman living a very solitary life in Beirut, Lebanon.

She was divorced by her Muslim husband, childless, estranged from her family and friendless, although she occasionally listened to her three neighbors’ coffee klatch as they discussed their lives through the thin

walls.
She had spent years working in a bookstore and took the opportunity to read classics and improve her English and French which she had learned in school before her schooling was abruptly ended by her marriage at age sixteen.

Her obsession, especially after her retirement from the bookstore, was to translate one English or French classic novel per year into Arabic. Once done with the translation, she carefully boxed them up and never looked at them again or attempted to have them published.

She also taught herself music appreciation and enjoyed classical music. Occasionally, she would treat herself to an outing at a local museum.

She spent her life in pursuits that she enjoyed and that were important only to her.

And then unexpectedly change was thrust on her.

I thought Aaliva was an interesting character. In fact, I thought the ending, with her change and evolution a bit tacked on – we must have a happy ending, after all! Was Aaliva happier, more fulfilled by the changes? Is more human connection always a good thing?

I loved the author’s use of language and the many books and musical pieces mentioned in the story. An interesting memorable, story.

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LibraryThing member wareagle78

A study of solitude. Aaliya Saleh, divorced with no children, unloved by her family of birth, ignored by her neighbors, with a memory of one close friend now long dead, contemplates her advanced age. Aaliya ran a bookstore for years, and decided to use her spare time to interpret books into Arabic

- translations unseen by anyone, that she holds to her fiercely, in boxes throughout her apartment. She only translates books from English or French translations, which often means holding the original work at some remove.

Aaliya's telling of her story is enriched with insights and quotes from the books she has loved, and her tastes have been profligate yet elevated. It is the rare book that forces me to look up a word, but I recommend a dictionary at hand for this! In the end, human connection is forced on her, and changes contemplated. It is a beautiful book, gritty is the scenes it sets yet lyrical and profound in the study of Aaliya herself.

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LibraryThing member clue

At seventy-two Aaliya speaks to us in a strong and engaging voice. She is divorced and childless and tells us that she has had only one close friend during her lifetime. Oddly for such a reclusive person, she loves Beirut for its turmoil and gossip.

During her working life Aaliya ran a bookstore.

As she ruminates on her life she includes quotations from a wide range of books and her own comments on literature, philosophy and art. She knows several languages and has translated 37 books, though she has never tried to publish any of them.

Alameddine has created an amazing character in Aalyia. The book rests solely on her thoughtful, sometimes humorous comments about herself and the world, but there wasn’t a page where I wanted to stop reading.

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LibraryThing member novelcommentary

The narrator of this short, quirky novel is Aaliya, a 72 year old Lebanese shut in who recently dyed her hair blue by mistake. Luckily she only has one dirty mirror and hardly has to see her mistake. Here's her words "I’m a conscientious cleaner, you might even say compulsive—the sink is

immaculately white, its bronze faucets sparkle—but I rarely remember to wipe the mirror clean. I don’t think we need to consult Freud or one of his many minions to know that there’s an issue here. I begin this tale with a badly lit reflection." And right away you see the best part of this novel: her voice. Alameddine has created a wonderful character who spends her days reading good literature. In fact it is a good idea to keep a pen handy to highlight the works she mentions. "I long ago abandoned myself to a blind lust for the written word. Literature is my sandbox. In it I play, build my forts and castles, spend glorious time. It is the world outside that box that gives me trouble." Each year she takes on one book to translate to Arabic. She uses the English and French versions of the work to help her create a second hand translation to her native tongue. When finished, the manuscript is boxed up and put into a back closet of her house. For fifty years this has been her mission. During that time she has also worked in a book store, had an unhappy marriage and was great friends with her sister in law Hanna. So in terms of looking for a big plot line you would need to go elsewhere. But if you're looking to get in the head of a wonderful character, learn a bit about the struggles of Beirut, or want to know why someone would sleep with an AK47 instead of a husband, I would recommend this entertaining novel.
Some good lines:
Beirut is the Elizabeth Taylor of cities: insane, beautiful, tacky, falling apart, aging, and forever drama laden. She’ll also marry any infatuated suitor who promises to make her life more comfortable, no matter how inappropriate he is.

Remembering is the malignancy that feasts on my now.

I heard Fadia once say that you can tell how well a marriage is working by counting the bite marks on each partner’s tongue.

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LibraryThing member ToriC90

Definitely a must read. I do not currently own this book (library-read), but plan to purchase and add to my bookshelves for when I'm ready to go back to it, which I surely will.

Before I began reading this book, members of my book club were mentioning the lack of traditional plot or story-line. This

made me hesitant as to whether I would truly be able to enjoy this book because I feared I would lose interest if there was nothing to push me forward. Because of the books rich history, attention to detail in music and literature, and strong voice the lack of a traditional plot was not a problem for me. I became involved with the main character, Aaliya, and that's all the story really needed. The book moved forward and was full of interesting stories and information.

The reader really gets to understand this self taught woman and respect her love of literature, music, and Beirut. All of these beautiful, intricate, and difficult things encompass who she is and yet none of which she sees as being quality traits; she simply sees herself, her life, and her work as unnecessary. The literature quotations and connections the author is able to make with works of art, music, and literature in order to help the character relate to the world are magnificent. Aaliya's relationships with the other characters such as the witches and her mother also help drive the book.

Do not be afraid if you are unfamiliar with the composers or authors this book mentions. Rabih Alameddine, the author, incorporates all of these outside references in such a delicate way that you don't even need an explanation as to why that reference was chosen for that sentence. If anything it makes you fall in love with the short passages and incites a curiosity of what the original work could offer for a reader or art lover.

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LibraryThing member PoetVictoria

Fantastic book! I started highlighting books and authors mentioned in the book, as well, to create a list of important works/authors to read. I miss my teachers, who used to help me with this.

LibraryThing member Lindoula

Read this if you enjoy literary quotes and protagonists who like to quote them a lot. I enjoyed the flow of this book, but at the same time I was also somewhat bothered by the near absence of plot.

LibraryThing member judylou

Aaliya Sohbi is 72 years old, living a solitary life in her Beirut apartment. The closest thing she has to friends are the three women from neighbouring apartments who meet every morning to gossip and drink coffee. Yet Aaliya never joins these women, who she calls the three witches; overhearing

their chat is enough for her. Her loving father died when she was very young leaving her with an uncaring step mother and indifferent half-brothers. She rarely sees them. She was once married, but was divorced very young, and had no children. The only good thing from that marriage was the apartment in which she still lives. So she sees herself as an unnecessary woman; her family’s “unnecessary appendage”.

Her only friends are her collections of books, from which she has read widely. She is a translator. She works to a strict regime; starting only on the first day of the year and only translating from books not in their original language. So she is a translator of translations. No-one has ever seen her translations. She keeps them locked away in her spare room.

Aaliya is an obsessive thinker about culture, philosophy and literature. She barely has a thought which is not justified or guided by one of her literary heroes or an esteemed piece of literature. This book is reads like an anthem to literature in all its forms, but shows us that nothing is sacred, or capable of lasting forever.

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LibraryThing member TheAmpersand

You can find a lot of the basic elements of good writing in "An Unnecessary Woman." The voice of its main character, a former bookstore employee and sometime translator named Aaliyah, is believable and compelling, and the book takes the reader on a short tour of modern Lebanese history and

describes how Beirutis have survived it, or not. The novel talks about how decades of conflict has affected both the city and the narrator's own life, and it provides both a lively description of neighborhood dynamics and a quieter, more sensitive take on one woman's intense loneliness. All of these things make "An Unnecessary Woman" a worthwhile read.

The problem with my book, as I see it, isn't its plot or its characters but the literary musings that run parallel to Aaliyah's narrative. It's not that her opinions or her choice of authors -- which runs to lesser known high-literary European types -- is objectionable. But I failed to see how the two halves of the book intersected with each other at all. I don't know how a Lebanese reader is likely to interpret, say, Fernando Pessoa, but, unfortunately, "An Unnecessary Woman" doesn't really let me know. Just about all of Aaliyah's observations -- and many of them are sharp -- could have just as well have come from some guy sitting in a café in Frankfurt or Oslo. While much of the book specifically concerns Aaliyah's life experience, her reading doesn't seem to have been at all influenced by the life she's lived.

One suspects that when she's discussing books Aaliyah mostly serves as a mouthpiece for the book's author, and the cultural alienation she feels might, in fact, be intentional, as Aaliyah mentions that literature often served as a refuge during the most difficult times of her life. But the sections in which she discusses books seem so walled-off from the rest of the novel. Aaliyah doesn't comment on anything here that wouldn't get high marks from a modern version of a fifties-era "I don't even own a television" American intellectual. There's a lot of classical music and literary fiction, but no Cairo pop, nothing in modern Arabic, no movies of an sort, no neighbors paying the radio, hardly any slang. The appearance of a young woman wearing a designer-brand t-shirt feels like some sort of tectonic shift. I realize that not everyone's cut out for poptimism, but the narrator doesn't even acknowledge these things to disparage them. She tells us how politics have affected her life, but, outside of her job at the bookstore, seems almost entirely ignorant of cultural politics -- what it means to be a reader and translator of Western literature in the Middle East. I wasn't able to suspend my disbelief, especially since the author works to give the book a strong sense of place in other ways. After all, Aaliyah has spent most of her life within the walls of her first and only apartment, which might almost be called a character in itself. You could make the crack that Alameddine could have called this novel "Translating Pessoa in Beirut," but, quite honestly, the book's central flaw is that it feels like Aaliyah could have been anyone translating Pessoa anywhere. This one's strong in some ways but not in others.

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