After years of an uncertain future on my TBR—always tempted to admit defeat and remove it, yet never quite gave in—my WhatsApp book club decided the issue for me and made Rabih Alameddine’s An Unnecessary Woman our read for March.
My reluctance about getting around to An Unnecessary Woman was entirely because I thought it would be a very serious, morose book. I think I added it to my TBR at about the same time as Bel Canto, and then after I read Bel Canto last year assumed An Unnecessary Woman would be more of the same.
This was not the case at all!
An Unnecessary Woman unfolds over the space of two days in the life of the narrator Aaliya, a childless divorcée living alone in Beirut who has just accidentally dyed her hair blue. After working for years in a bookstore, she is now retired (or unemployed? her source of income was unclear to me) and spends her days translating her favorite books into Arabic. In the space of these two days, the isolated and solitary Aaliya reflects on her life in Beirut, her rare friendships and strained familial relationships, her love of music and literature. Aaliya and Renée from L’Élégance du hérisson would get on like a house on fire.
I go through periods in my life where I get very grumpy and frustrated with fiction. There are so many books, so many novels, what’s the point of trying to wade through the tidal wave of stories out there? Maris Kreizman over on LitHub expressed it well, though less from a reader or existentialist perspective and more from a publishing perspective. An Unnecessary Woman was just the book I needed to read in that sort of mood.
