EIGHT MONTHS ON GHAZZAH STREET: Hilary Mantel

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Like so many who joined Peace Corps to make a difference (myself absolutely included) what do you do when faced with people who stubbornly refuse to accept the new colonialist’s ways? So, this was already a book I wanted to read, so I approached it already thinking it was a book I would enjoy. Hillary has very successfully managed to expose the many frictions between Islam and the West in this unique and captivating novel.

Based on Mantel's own experiences in Saudi Arabia, [1] the novel explores different peoples' struggles with the contrast in cultures, including those of people of different Islamic cultures, and misunderstandings between the Saudis and Westerners, as well as between women and men. 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.But her friendships are with the Muslim, though not Saudi, women who live in her off-compound apartment block. Whether from isolation, malice, or simple boredom, people there were far more credulous and excitable than educated people are generally thought to be, and this hermetic, overheated atmosphere made it a thriving black petri dish of melodrama and distortion. 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. Being kicked out of Saudi Arabia is one of the better outcomes; the worst is having to be in a jail or a hospital, where things happen, things that you can never prove, so officially, they never happened.

As in UK, Arab expats or immigrants are intrusive and nosy, so the story is actually about Western expats in Arab countries. La mirada critica y reflexiva (con un cierto toque de humor negro), de Hilary Mantel a través de Frances, la llevan a intentar entender muchas de las cuestiones sobre todo en torno a la mujer a las que se ve obligada a enfrentarse. The novel works at many levels, however, and is also a crushing indictment of Western materialism and greed. You might as well say you should respect the customs of cannibals or acknowledge that slavery is legitimate if it's part of the local culture, because the Wahabi perversion of Islam is as benighted and savage. It's only slowly that a more sinister plot starts to emerge, and one which, wisely, Mantel chooses to keep shadowy and implied rather than tying it down more overtly.As her days empty of certainty and purpose, her life becomes a blank -- waiting to be filled by violence and disaster. The answers to all the questions that beset you are not in facts, which are the greatest illusion of all, but in your own heart, in your own habits, in your limitations, in your fear. Yes, British expats sometimes get a bad reputation, I don’t how fair that is, but this bunch were not nice. The day she left Jeddah, she says in an interview at the back of the book, was the happiest day of her life. The story is slow-paced, the main character is annoyingly sanctimonious - oh, and there's also no plot to speak of.

Nearly 30 years on from its original publication, Hilary Mantel's third novel is still as disturbing, incisive and illuminating as ever.

As Frances gets to know her neighbours, particularly Yasmin who she sees more of initially, she also comes to wonder about that fourth flat – as she hears whispers and footsteps coming from there – and a shrouded figure disappearing upstairs. Reviewing the book in The Spectator, Anita Brookner wrote of a "tightness of control" and commented that a "peculiar fear emanates from this narrative". 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. 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. The plot is slight:woman follows her husband to his new job in Saudi Arabia and encounters extreme sexual segregation in the society, feels frustrated,parnaoid and out of control and stumbles upon a murky, suppressed sludgefund of secrets, and perhaps a violent mystery within her own apartment complex.