Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Alameddine chronicles a Lebanese family's turbulent but happy lives in his ebullient latest (after The Wrong End of the Telescope). Narrator Raja, 63, shares an apartment in Beirut with his mother, with whom he's very close. With disarming charm, he reflects on their recent challenges, such as the Covid-19 pandemic and Lebanon's banking collapse. Raja, who is gay, maintains a similar tone when describing his older brother, Farouk, a family man with whom he's often at odds: "My brother was as transparent as a piece of glass, only not as smart." Raja also delves into his life-threatening experiences during the 1975 civil war, including when he was held captive by a soldier named Boodie, whom Raja won over by teaching him to dance. Often Raja's adventures turn out badly, but in his telling he manages to come out on top. For instance, 30 years earlier, when he was a schoolteacher, he had sex with a man who then tried to blackmail him, threatening to out him to his colleagues. It amuses Raja now to remember that the man didn't believe him when he claimed that everyone knew he was gay, including his mother. Throughout, the author skillfully juxtaposes unflinching depictions of war and deprivation with the narrator's joie de vivre. It's a ravishing performance. Agent: Nicole Aragi, Aragi, Inc. (Sept.)
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Alameddine's (Comforting Myths: Concerning the Political in Art) newest novel does not unfold chronologically but instead works its way forward in time and then backward again, spanning decades and set mostly between Lebanon and the United States. These shifts add personal context to world events, with particular attention paid to the impact of the 1975--90 Lebanese Civil War. Despite the historical and political setting, the story is ultimately a personal one--dealing with the life of one man, Raja, as he navigates his relationship to his mother, his family, his country, and his sexuality. Some passages are difficult, with painful glimpses of homophobia, war, and other traumas. Still, Raja and the other characters are so humorous and the tone is so glib that the book remains readable and deeply human. Alameddine is probably best known for his 2014 novel An Unnecessary Woman, which won the Arab American Book Award, and his PEN/Faulkner Award-winning 2022 novel The Wrong End of the Telescope. His newest novel measures up to those lauded works. VERDICT Readers will be grateful for this funny and touching book dealing with the complexities of family, sexuality, life, and death.--Alice Kallman
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A gay Beiruti man comes to terms with his mother issues. Alameddine is gifted at finding the humor in what for most writers would be singularly traumatic themes, including AIDS (Koolaids: The Art of War, 1998), the Lebanese Civil War (An Unnecessary Woman, 2014), and the plight of Middle Eastern migrants (The Wrong End of the Telescope, 2021). Here, he applies his sardonic wit again to the Civil War as well as the calamities of Covid-19, Lebanon's banking collapse, and the 2020 Beirut port explosion. But before all that, the title characters are bickering. Raja, a respected philosophy teacher with one acclaimed book to his credit, has been living with his elderly mother in a small apartment made even smaller by the presence of more extended relatives. Exasperated with being reduced to his mother's "homosexual nonbreeding son," as well as her dangerous involvement in antigovernment protests, he seeks a respite, and one finds him: an all-expenses-paid residency at an institution in the United States. This may be too good to be true (note the title). But before exploring that, Raja relates the story of his two-month captivity at the hands of an acquaintance during the 1975 Civil War. That period includes all the degradations of a kidnapping, but Raja also depicts it as a case of Stockholm Syndrome, with his captor becoming a sexual and emotional confessor. Did the experience inspire his interest in cross-dressing and philosophy? It's an open question, but it seems to have given him the kind of sass and self-deprecating humor that complicates his character and enlivens the story. Raja's fatalism is well honed by his period of torment, but also by the everyday annoyances of his family. On both levels, it's a peculiar but lively and humane book. A sharp exploration of resilience in dark times. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
