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Pass it Along: 'An Unnecessary Woman' by Rabih Alameddine is a gem!

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This article is more than 8 years old.

Some books are sold by word of mouth from one passionate reader to another. “An Unneccessary Woman” by Rabih Alameddine (a Grove Press paperback) is such a gem and I have Richard Strassman, attorney and reader extraordinaire, to thank for the recommendation.

“An Unnecessary Woman,” is Aaliya, a divorced single woman in late middle age (she is seventy-two), her hair turned blue in a hair coloring accident, who has spent almost all of her adult life in the same Beirut apartment building and who is the first person narrator of a very bookish life. Her family, her neighbors, her marriage, her loves, all are fair game in Aaliya’s recollections.

Aaliya worked for many years in a bookstore and for the last several decades, she has made a ritual of starting every January 1st by starting a new translation of a foreign book into Arabic. At first she only translated books that had already been translated, from English into French, or Russian into French, and then used those translations as the basis of her work. She contemplates translating a work from its original French or English into Arabic but is not sure she is ready. Nor is she ready to have her transaltions published or even read. They remain her private project, a boxed collection that is overtaking her apartment.

The novel is filled with literary allusions, and strongly held literary opinions. One could easily compile a reading list of more than two dozen novels worth exploring as recommended and/or critiqued by Aaliya. “An Unnecessary Woman” is also the story of Lebanon and of Beirut, its wars civil and otherwise. Aaliya narrates her chronicle of aging, the loss of cherished ones, grief, the unexpected kindness of strangers and how the will to go on can persist even in those who least expect it, such as Aaliya, who may consider herself an ‘Unnecessary Woman” but who, in Rabih Alameddine’s telling, makes for irresistible and very necessary reading.

This is a book, worth passing along: read it and tell a friend.