Girls of Riyadh

My copy has this gorgeous cover,
 which is raised shiny dots in real life
 and is so satisfying to the touch. 

Girls of Riyadh / Rajaa Alsanea; translated from the Arabic by Rajaa Alsanea & Marilyn Booth.
New York: Penguin, 2007, c2005.
304 p. 

This was an unusual read - told in the form of emails sent out to a mailing list, purporting to be the story of four Saudi Arabian women told by another young woman with a modern flair for narrative, it's most famous for opening up the private lives of contemporary Saudi girls and young women and thus being banned in Saudi Arabia itself upon publication.

The book centres on the lives of four women: Gamreh, Lamees, Michelle, and Sadeem.

Each of them struggles differently with the conflict between living with modern desires and living within a traditional society with its resultant expectations and social mores. From wanting to become a doctor, or a career woman, or just to be happily married instead of betrayed and divorced, each woman has to manage her desires and efforts in light of the limitations set by societal norms. 

Despite the concept, and some of the more depressing things that the characters face, there is a very light tone to the book overall. The writer character archly speaks to her audience (the readers of her email newsletter) at the start of each episode, and keeps an ironic distance from much of the narrative. I've seen this slightingly referred to as Arabic Chick Lit - but I don't see a problem with that. Not everything has to be deep and serious all the time. Chick Lit is often concerned with both worldly success and romance, and those issues are both key to this story. The romance might be told a little differently than Western audiences expect, since there are specific ways in which men and women can interact in this segment of wealthy Saudi families. (yes, it's definitely a wealthy circle, with lots of global travel and money to spend for most of the girls - though not all). 

Each of the characters illustrates a different kind of life experience, and reveals the daily lives of these often bored Saudi girls. Perhaps the feeling that Alsanea was spilling secrets is why it was so scandalous by reputation when it first came out. I didn't find it scandalous at all from my perspective; nothing racy or shocking to be found here, but honesty about a woman's life seems to be able to upset a lot of people. 

I thought the format was an interesting choice - again, a reinforcement of the modernity of the fictional audience's lives, reading email installments each week. The only issue is that when the emails finally came to a close, not all the storylines were satisfactorily concluded, at least not for me. It's hard to create a powerful conclusion when there are four storylines going concurrently and none of them are at a crisis point any more.

But as a glimpse into a different kind of life, that of Riyadh's Bright Young Things, it was illuminating. Some of the characters' choices were a bit baffling at first glance, but in the English translation at least, there seemed to be enough background information added about Arabic culture to allow the reader to begin to understand these women. While I have no idea if this level of explanatory prose was in the original, obviously, it did help in the comprehension if not the flow of the story. 

I was surprised by which characters I grew most attached to, and which ones I hoped better things for. While it felt like a light read in process, I'm surprised by how much I've thought about it afterward.