Amin Maalouf is a new writer on the pretty wicked scene of my bookshelves. I bought this, and another of his novels, quite recently. I remember being vaguely told that maybe this novel was not the place to start with Maalouf, but I couldn't resist the themes of gender bias and selective birth. Not entirely incidentally, I found
this article on Maalouf fascinating, and perhaps the comment that Maalouf "believes the level of civilisation of any society can be determined by the place of women" is an interesting context in which to read this book.
The author is a Lebanese writer, who now lives in France. He's written a fair few books, all of which look fascinating, and operates predominantly in the genre of historical fiction, although he has also written some non-fiction, such as
The Crusades Through Arab Eyes.
So, despite being advised that he's written better novels, I chose this as my first book of 2010. I was very far from being disappointed. On the surface, the story is a simple one: a fairly mild entomologist narrates, and he and his partner become gradually aware that there is a 'substance' causing significant gender imbalance – through reducing the number of girls born – which has been operating for some years in 'the South' (to use the terminology of the book).
Discoveries are made, a network is created, the problem becomes well-known and global politics and violence come into play; all somewhat in the background of the narrator's personal joy in his own daughter (the eponymous Beatrice). The gender imbalance, once it has taken root, cannot easily be remedied, with inevitably tragic consequences: violence, fear, and poverty affecting the entire world, and not just the countries where the substance originated.
Yet this is not a simple book. While the overall question being raised is made fairly obvious, and waves itself about all over the place, there are layers of questions and ideas and concepts that are subtly raised and quietly passed by. It's a book that prompts question after question and so, when you finish the story, the novel taken as a whole is not pushed aside so easily.
Of the key moments in the text, one of the most distressing for me was perhaps less the violence that erupts sporadically throughout the latter half of the book, and more the role of the 'devil's advocate': a public figure who defends the substance while it operates in the South. While the characters find it hard to rebut his arguments (although I could think of a few ways, and was somewhat disappointed that the villain wasn't verbally trounced in seconds), he symbolises the potential and actual amorality of some key figures in the North. Part of this amorality exhibits itself in the de-gendering of the atrocity: gender politics are ignored and the benefits of a certain level of 'de-population' in the South is considered, from his perspective, desirable. While this perspective is morally abhorrent, it also is intellectually cowardly; the 'ostrich' approach to political debate. It's not happening to us, let's just ignore it.
Another interesting feature was the focus on the father-daughter relationship, as opposed to a father-son relationship. In one political stunt, the narrator features on an advert with his daughter, essentially to promote having daughters. Clarence, Beatrice's mother, is herself not startlingly maternal, not unmaternal, and not held up for judgement for devoting her life to travelling around the world for her journalistic career. Thus enabling the father-daughter bond to take centre stage – and I find it hard to think of a similar literary instance of this – and Beatrice's father to enjoy a more sedate, family-oriented life with his daughter and his work and Clarence whenever she's around.
One aspect of this, however, was one of the more troubling parts of the narrative: Clarence is not particularly inclined herself to have a child, but because of the fervent desire of her partner for a daughter, she consents to have a child. While, obviously, she is not also asked to forego anything else in her life for Beatrice, it's still a significant decision to make; a subtle spectre of coercion (the coercion of desire and love) seems, to me, to be present. At times I found this hard to reconcile with the rest of the novel and with my own feelings, and would have been interested to see this further explored.
What is also discussed, towards the end of the book, is that one of the impacts of the gender imbalance is that women become in constant danger from violence (such as sexual violence, and kidnap) and as such their freedoms are eroded: they must be everywhere accompanied for safety, and staying at home seems like a more compelling option for many families.
I've focused on themes to do with gender here, as I read this for the Women Unbound challenge (see below), but there is a whole wealth of other issues here: including racism, science and morality, tolerance and knowledge.
Taken on the face of it as a 'dystopia' novel, perhaps it's not as successful as it could have been. The world-wide catastrophe is narrated perhaps too calmly, the focus upon the narrators (quite happy) home-life is perhaps too great to be a stand-out example of the genre. Personally, I think this would be to do the book a disservice. The narrative voice is part of the book's distinctive charm; it's perfectly suited to the character of the entomologist and the way he likes to order his thoughts and his life. The language is splendidly graceful and assured, and the way the story is balanced permits thoughts and ideas and musings to weave through a more pleasing personal story to fleck the whole with enough tension and disorder to be unnerving.
Suffice to say (and perhaps I should have 'sufficed' a little earlier), I greatly enjoyed it. I found Maalouf's style wonderful, and will definitely read more of his work, with pleasure.
Alphonse's Analysis
Well, I do think that this is worth a good old read. What's more, this book was read for the
Women Unbound. While there are folks out there what might think this is a bit peculiar, I'm not one of them. It might be all fiction and written by one of them men-folk, but the themes and thoughts what are in it are all quite suitable for them people who like the gender studies (like I do).
I guess this means that when it comes to the Women Unbound challenge, we've read 1/5 books. Keep 'em coming.
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