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An Unnecessary Woman, by Rabih Alameddine
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Winner of the California Book Award
Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award
Finalist for the National Book Award
“Beautiful and absorbing.”—New York Times
An Unnecessary Woman is a breathtaking portrait of one reclusive woman’s late-life crisis, which garnered a wave of rave reviews and love letters to Alameddine’s cranky yet charming septuagenarian protagonist, Aaliya, a character you “can’t help but love” (NPR). Aaliya’s insightful musings on literature, philosophy, and art are invaded by memories of the Lebanese Civil War and her 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. Here, the gifted Rabih Alameddine has given us a nuanced rendering of one woman's life in the Middle East and an enduring ode to literature and its power to define who we are.
“A paean to the transformative power of reading, to the intellectual asylum from one’s circumstances found in the life of the mind.”—LA Review of Books
“[The novel] throbs with energy…[Aaliya’s] inventive way with words gives unfailing pleasure, no matter how dark the events she describes, how painful the emotions she reveals.”—Washington Post
- Sales Rank: #28207 in eBooks
- Published on: 2014-02-04
- Released on: 2014-02-04
- Format: Kindle eBook
From Booklist
*Starred Review* Seventy-two-year-old Beirut native Aaliya Sobhi, living a solitary life, has always felt herself unnecessary. The father who adored her died young, and her remarried mother focused attention on Aaliya’s half brothers, leaving her to describe herself as “my family’s appendix, its unnecessary appendage,” an attitude reinforced by her Lebanese culture. Divorced at 20 after a negligible marriage, she lived alone and began her life’s work of translating the novels she most loved into Arabic from other translations, then simply storing them, unread, in her apartment. Sustained by her “blind lust for the written word” and surrounded by piles of books, she anticipates beginning a new translation project each year until disaster appears to upend her life. But these are just the bare bones of a plot. The richness here is in Aaliya’s first-person narration, which veers from moments in her life to literature to the wars that have wracked her beloved native city during her lifetime. Studded with quotations and succinct observations, this remarkable novel by Alameddine (The Hakawati, 2008) is a paean to fiction, poetry, and female friendship. Dip into it, make a reading list from it, or simply bask in its sharp, smart prose. --Michele Leber
Review
Finalist for the National Book Award
Washington Post Top 50 Fiction Books of 2014; Kirkus Best Books of 2014; NPR Best Books of 2014; Amazon 100 Best Books of 2014; The Christian Science Monitor Top 10 Fiction Books of 2014
Praise for AN UNNECESSARY WOMAN
“An Unnecessary Woman is a meditation on, among other things, aging, politics, literature, loneliness, grief and resilience. If there are flaws to this beautiful and absorbing novel, they are not readily apparent.”—New York Times
“[I]rresistible… [the author] offers winningly unrestricted access to the thoughts of his affectionate, urbane, vulnerable and fractiously opinionated heroine. Aaliya says that when she reads, she tries to 'let the wall crumble just a bit, the barricade that separates me from the book.' Mr. Alameddine's portrayal of a life devoted to the intellect is so candid and human that, for a time, readers can forget that any such barrier exists.”—Wall Street Journal
“Alameddine…has conjured a beguiling narrator in his engaging novel, a woman who is, like her city, hard to read, hard to take, hard to know and, ultimately, passionately complex.”—San Francisco Chronicle
“[An] opaque self-portrait of an utterly beguiling misanthrope… Aaliya notes that: “Reading a fine book for the first time is as sumptuous as the first sip of orange juice that breaks the fast in Ramadan.” You don’t have to fast first (in fact it helps to have gorged on the books that Aaliya translates and adores) in order to savor Alameddine’s succulent fiction.”— Steven G. Kellman, The Boston Globe
“You can't help but love this character.”—Arun Rath, NPR’s All Things Considered
“A restlessly intelligent novel built around an unforgettable character…a novel full of elegant, poetic sentences.”—Minneapolis Star Tribune
“I can’t remember the last time I was so gripped simply by a novel’s voice. Alameddine makes it clear that a sheltered life is not necessarily a shuttered one. Aaliya is thoughtful, she’s complex, she’s humorous and critical.”—NPR.com
“[A] powerful intellectual portrait of a reader who is misread….a meditation on being and literature, written by someone with a passionate love of language and the power of words to compose interior worlds. It’s about how, and by what means, we survive. About how, in the end, what is hollow and unneeded becomes full, essential and enduring.”—Earl Pike, Cleveland Plain Dealer
“Beautiful writing…sharp, smart and often sardonic…an homage to literature.”— Fran Hawthorne, The National
“Reading An Unnecessary Woman is about listening to a voice — Aaliya’s — not cantering through a plot, although powerful events do occur, both in the present and in memory…a fun, and often funny, book…rich in quirky metaphors… An Unnecessary Woman is not a game, though; it is a grave, powerful book. It is the hour-by-hour study of a woman who is struggling for dignity with every breath...The meaning of human dignity is perhaps the great theme of literature, and Alameddine takes it on in every page of this extraordinary book.”— Washington Independent Review of Books
“Playful, brainy and full of zest, An Unnecessary Woman is an antidote to literary blandness.”—Newsday
“Aaliya is a formidable character… When An Unnecessary Woman offers her what she regards as the corniest of conceits – a redemption arc – it’s a delight to see her take it.”—Yvonne Zipp, The Christian Science Monitor
"An Unnecessary Woman is a book lover's book. If you've ever felt not at home in the world—or in your own skin—or preferred the company of a good book to that of an actual person, this book will welcome you with open arms and tell you that you're not alone. You just might find a home within its pages.”— Julie Hakim Azzam, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
"An intimate, melancholy and superb tour de force...Alameddine’s storytelling is rich with a bookish humor that’s accessible without being condescending. A gemlike and surprisingly lively study of an interior life."—Kirkus(starred review)
“Studded with quotations and succinct observations, this remarkable novel by Alameddine is a paean to fiction, poetry, and female friendship. Dip into it, make a reading list from it, or simply bask in its sharp, smart prose.”— Michele Leber, Booklist (starred review)
"Alameddine’s most glorious passages are those that simply relate Aalyia’s thoughts, which read like tiny, wonderful essays. A central concern of the book is the nature of the desire of artistic creators for their work to matter, which the author treats with philosophical suspicion. In the end, Aalyia’s epiphany is joyful and freeing."—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Acclaimed author Alameddine (The Hakawati) here relates the internal struggles of a solitary, elderly woman with a passion for books...Aaliya's life may seem like a burden or even "unnecessary" to others since she is divorced and childless, but her humor and passion for literature bring tremendous richness to her day-to-day life—and to the reader's... Though set in the Middle East, this book is refreshingly free of today's geopolitical hot-button issues. A delightful story for true bibliophiles, full of humanity and compassion."—Library Journal
“Around and about the central narrative, like tributaries, flow stories of those people Aaliyah has known…The city of Beirut itself is a character, collapsing, reshaping, renewing, mod¬ern¬ising as Aaliyah herself grows old. Aaliyah’s mordant wit is lit by Alameddine’s exquisite turns of phrase… An Unnecessary Woman is a story of innumerable things. It is a tale of blue hair and the war of attrition that comes with age, of loneliness and grief, most of all of resilience, of the courage it takes to survive, stay sane and continue to see beauty. Read it once, read it twice, read other books for a decade or so, and then pick it up and read it anew. This one’s a keeper.”— Aminatta Forna, The Independent (UK)
“[W]hat Alameddine offers here, most of all, is a window into the lives of Beiruti women... Aaliya, literary devotee, may consider herself “unnecessary”–but the novel proves very necessary indeed.”—Lambda
“A novel that manages to be both quiet and voluptuous, driven by a madcap intimacy that thoroughly resists all things ‘cute’ or ‘exotic.’”—Dwyer Murphy, Guernica
“Beautiful …despite [Aaliya’s] constant claims that she is unlovable it takes only a few pages of reading to realize this isn’t true – she’s extraordinary, even beguiling. She’s tough, opinionated, and deeply caring, but also passive, insecure, and fearful. Complex, in other words, and real. The novel is both intimate and expansive, opening out into the world of politics and war even as it’s rooted in the thoughts of this unnecessary, fascinating person.”— Aruna D'Souza, Riffle.com
“Aaliya is intelligent, acerbic and funny, one of those rare characters who becomes more real to readers than the people around them, and will remain will them for a long time.”—The Daily Star (Lebanon)
“Aaliya’s reminiscences make up “her total globe, her entire world”. In her, we see that feminism resists categorisation and is not defined by the West. Aaliyah embodies the self-determination of both the feminist and the writer, and exhibits vulnerability, determination and wisdom. But, most important, it is in the honesty of Aaliyah’s narration that we see the passion of the modern woman, full of knowledge and a vibrant interior world.”—Sarah Dempster, The Australian
“At once a sublime encomium to the art of reading well, where the pleasures of the text are called to the task of self-making, the novel is also a gentle appeal against loftiness. For every canonical seduction, there is pause for the folly of disconnection, the vanity of denial. In Alameddine’s examination of memory, translation and freedom, there is an insistence that life is more than the cruel absurdities of a reductive reality. An Unnecessary Woman charms with expressive cynicism and inadvertent optimism, shining a unique light on the art of storytelling.”—Readings (Australia)
“This impossibly beautiful funny novel is a window into another world. Rabih Alameddine has drawn a fierce and passionate character whose love of life and literature draws the reader into her labyrinthine story. An Unneccessary Woman is for anyone who has an enduring love affair with books, the desire to understand the human condition or a glimpse into the rich and exotic straddling of life that the city of Beirut epitomises.”—The Hoopla.com (Australia)
“An Unnecessary Woman dramatizes a wonderful mind at play. The mind belongs to the protagonist, and it is filled with intelligence, sharpness and strange memories and regrets. But, as in the work of Calvino and Borges, the mind is also that of the writer, the arch-creator. His tone is ironic and knowing; he is fascinated by the relationship between life and books. He is a great phrase-maker and a brilliant writer of sentences. And over all this fiercely original act of creation is the sky of Beirut throwing down a light which is both comic and tragic, alert to its own history and to its mythology, guarding over human frailty and the idea of the written word with love and wit and understanding and a rare sort of wisdom.”—Colm Toibin
"The extraordinary if “unnecessary” woman at the center of this magnificent novel built into my heart a sediment of life lived in reverse, through wisdom, epiphany, and regret. This woman—Aaliya is her name—for all her sly and unassuming modesty, is a stupendous center of consciousness. She understands time, and folly, and is wonderfully comic. She has read everything under the sun (as has her creator, Alameddine), and as a polyglot mind of an old world Beirut, she reminds us that storehouses of culture, of literature, of memory, are very fragile things indeed. They exist, shimmering, as chimeras, in the mind of Aaliya, who I am so happy to feel I now know. Her particularity, both tragic and lightly clever, might just stay with me forever."—Rachel Kushner
"There are many ways to break someone's heart, but Rabih Alameddine is one rare writer who not only breaks our hearts but gives every broken piece a new life. With both tender care and surgical exactness, An Unnecessary Woman leads us away from the commonplace and the mundane to enter a world made of love for words, wisdom, and memories. No words can express my gratitude for this book."
—Yiyun Li
"With An Unnecessary Woman, Rabih Alameddine has accomplished something astonishing: a novel that is at once expansive and intimate, quiet and full of feeling. Aaliya is one of the more memorable characters in contemporary fiction, and every page of this extraordinary novel demands to be savored and re-read."—Daniel Alarcón
“An Unnecessary Woman offers a testament to the saving virtue of literature and an unforgettable protagonist . . . . Alameddine maintains a steady electric current between past and present, fantasy and reality.”—D Repubblica (Italy)
“A contemporary fable about passion: passion for literature and the passions of love.”—L’Unita (Italy)
“Passion is the key to this book, which has already been hailed as a masterpiece: passion for a man, and passion for books.”—Oggi (Italy)
A Daily Beast Hot Read
About the Author
Rabih Alameddine is the author of the novels Koolaids, I, the Divine, and The Hakawati, and the story collection The Perv.
Most helpful customer reviews
100 of 104 people found the following review helpful.
An Unnecessary Woman
By Xoe Li Lu
Rabih Alameddine's An Unnecessary Woman is a rare book indeed. This is the first time I recall reading an intelligent story about an older woman - completely about an older woman and no other characters - since Vita Sackville-West's All Passion Spent. The brilliant Alameddine has managed to beautifully capture the innermost thoughts of a complex, intelligent, lonely, and independent Beiruti woman in her early 70s – that’s something you don’t come across every day! Aaliya is not an incidental mother or wife, some ancillary character supporting male counterparts that could be removed from the story with little consequence – no, she is the heart, soul and troubled psyche of this intensely thoughtful, quietly moving book. Alameddine does an amazing job of empathizing with Aaliya and making her situation, her thoughts and experiences, real. A largely self-educated woman of high intelligence - an anomaly in Beirut society due to her independence and intellect - she is an observer, an inward thinker, a fly on the wall that bears witness to Beirut’s chaotic history over 50 years in her spacious, book-filled apartment. An outcast to her family and society at large, she skirts the expectations of others and manages to live her life as she wants, taking on long-term literary translation projects for her own pleasure, aloofly eavesdropping on her gossiping neighbors, and observing her beloved city from the shadows. The city of Beirut and its inhabitants also figure largely in the story. In many ways it is a love letter to Beirut, with all its flaws and conflict, danger and beauty.
Aaliya, as her name implies, is indeed "above it all;" she views her role in life as that of a casual spectator of events, both large and small. She is a resourceful and capable woman, able to stand up to bullying men in her life (from rioting looters to soldiers to her spiteful half-brothers), behavior which is contrary to her meek self-image. She is a fascinating study in contrasts - how she views herself and how she actually behaves and comports herself completely dissimilar.
Largely unsuccessful with human relationships, Aaliya acknowledges her difficulty in relating to others and is at peace with it. She retreats into the world of literature, meticulously translating great works into Arabic for her own pleasure and distraction. Translation is where she finds joy, industry, purpose, and identity. It gets her through war, personal loss, and loneliness. Her translation projects enable her to rise above the devastation that often surrounds her and provides an alternate focus - something upon which to concentrate to drown out the chaos of life in Beirut. "Sneaking off into literature to escape life" keeps her sane and functioning for fifty years.
Aaliya works through her feelings of uselessness and loneliness. She drops to the depths of depression and is buoyed with confidence and hope. She realizes that no matter how old one becomes, you can always be shattered by a single utterance from your own mother. At times she reflects on her unusual circumstances – no husband, no children, no occupation - and suffers moments of crushing, debilitating disappointment and defeat. In the end, circumstances force her to view her life from another perspective, and she experiences a revelation that is as uplifting for the reader as it must be for her.
Alameddine is a master storyteller – he has an innate ability to choose the perfect words to create beautiful sentences that perfectly relate subtle emotion. His characters and scenes are easy to envision and his stories reverberate with the reader for weeks – months – after a book is finished. While “An Unnecessary Woman” may at first glance appear to be depressing and heavy, I can assure you that it is not. Alameddine manages to discuss heady themes – loneliness, aging, despair – without bringing the reader down. I can’t even explain how he does this. The book is so gorgeously written, so evocative and so lush; I understood the characters intrinsically, yet I was not saddened while reading it. Aaliya is not all gloom and doom – she is a vibrant, thinking woman who ruminates on what is it to age, and that process naturally carries with it a host of emotions. She is matter-of-fact and very likeable – she’s the kind of person you never really get to know very well in real life, and here Alameddine has given us an invitation to explore every aspect of her beautiful, flawed psyche. I empathized with Aaliyah, understood her and respected her. Michael Chabon pronounced Alameddine a “daring” writer, and I have to agree. Taking on this subject, in today’s youth-obsessed climate, and making something so beautiful out of it is truly a feat. I am so glad that I read “An Unnecessary Woman” – it will stay with me for a very long time.
77 of 82 people found the following review helpful.
A wonderful insight into literature via one woman's life
By Patricia
I can’t recall what originally attracted me to this book because if I had known a bit more I might not have gotten it. But I loved it! Once actually get a book I like to know nothing about it – I don’t read the reviews on the back. I like to be completely in the dark. The writing here is so well done – and just saturated with literature (that alone should inspire you to read it). It is a first person narrative and the voice is so true. The narrator is a 70-year old woman and only after I finished did I realize the author (Rabith Alameddine) is male. Wow – he got the voice. I will have to read much more of his writing.
I don’t like to give away much of plot lines but our narrator is a 70-year-old woman (close to my age!) living in current day Beirut. It is a good history lesson of that city though in a background kind of way. She retired from a bookstore, loves literature and spends all her time translating classics into Arabic. She is also a complete hermit barely having any human contact unless she can’t avoid it. And the plot takes off from there – marvelously. It is a very easy read and hard to put down. It spirals to an intriguing conclusion. I highly recommend it.
Now I have to go back and write down many of the books and authors she comments on so I too can read them. Many are classics but a lot of them are new to me, so much so that at first I wondered if this novel was making them up and until I quickly looked them up on Amazon and felt quite ignorant! There is a goldmine of literary references in this book, just casually tossed in, as well as comments on classics. I loved her quick analysis of Hemmingway and Faulkner! I'll be reading some of the books she comments on for years to come. Don’t miss this book…
77 of 85 people found the following review helpful.
An extended literary character study
By Experienced Editor
Aaliya was given in an arranged marriage at age 16 and divorced at 20 for the fault of being childless. For 50+ years she has lived alone in her ex-husband's abandoned apartment in Beirut and translated books into Arabic. As she finishes each translation, she seals the manuscript pages into a box and stores it in her apartment. No one else will ever read it … an unnecessary translation, the labor of an unnecessary woman.
Aaliya's memoir is not so much story as the rambling reminiscence of a highly intelligent, self-educated recluse. She has cut herself off from her extended family, has few acquaintances, and has had only one friend in her life. Watch for the name Hannah, which is dropped into the narrative at intervals. It takes many pages before Aaliya is ready to reveal why Hannah is significant. (No, it's not what you’re thinking.) Aaliya's thoughts circle among bits of her childhood, her brief married life, her many years alone … with a great deal of emphasis on the books she has read, the philosophers she has studied, the history and the culture in which she lives. Although she hates to set foot outside her apartment, she is familiar with faraway times and places through her reading and translating. She offers her critiques as if she assumes the reader will be familiar with the authors and books and philosophies on which she is commenting. At times I found it frustrating to encounter a lengthy critique of a work I haven't read or an author I don’t know, but that's part of Aaliya's character. It's how she thinks.
Aaliya sums up her own story by quoting Pessoa (p. 107): "The only attitude worthy of a superior man is to persist in an activity he recognizes is useless, to observe a discipline he knows is sterile, and to apply certain norms of philosophical and metaphysical thought that he considers utterly inconsequential." This attitude she applies in her own life.
The writing is often (although not always) beautiful, especially in the descriptions of Beirut. It is also clever, with pithy, well-crafted zingers directed at authors, neighbors, family, and anyone else who captures Aaliya's attention. The book will be most appreciated by readers with a broad literary background and an interest in comparative literature. Despite its literary and intellectual merits, I'm afraid I found it to be slow going. There's a limit to how much cleverness I can take before I have to get up, walk away, and find a cup of black coffee.
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