Celestial Bodies
Ratings5
Average rating2.8
15
Ratings5
Average rating2.8
This winner of the 2019 Man Booker International Prize and national bestseller is “an innovative reimagining of the family saga . . . Celestial Bodies is itself a treasure house: an intricately calibrated chaos of familial orbits and conjunctions, of the gravitational pull of secrets" (The New York Times Book Review). In the village of al-Awafi in Oman, we encounter three sisters: Mayya, who marries after a heartbreak; Asma, who marries from a sense of duty; and Khawla, who chooses to refuse all offers and await a reunion with the man she loves, who has emigrated to Canada. These three women and their families, their losses and loves, unspool beautifully against a backdrop of a rapidly changing Oman, a country evolving from a traditional, slave-owning society into its complex present. Through the sisters, we glimpse a society in all its degrees, from the very poorest of the local slave families to those making money through the advent of new wealth. The first novel originally written in Arabic to ever win the Man Booker International Prize, and the first book by a female Omani author to be translated into English, Celestial Bodies marks the arrival in the United States of a major international writer.
Reviews with the most likes.
I couldn't have read this book if I hadn't read [b:The Five Wounds 53597769 The Five Wounds Kirstin Valdez Quade https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1612030905l/53597769.SY75.jpg 83925120] two months ago. Ignorant, cruel barbarians living empty worthless lives – I would've cast it aside before page fifty. But the impact of Five Wounds lingered in me. I kept thinking back to the compassion Valdez Quade showed toward her ignorant characters; remembering their contexts and inner conflicts, the nightmare systems that produced them and that keeps them stuck; and I decided to apply that compassion and keep reading.Unfortunately, this was no Five Wounds. There's nothing worthwhile about any of these brutes: sure, they too are the product of a shitty religiofascist culture, and they too have been raised with idiotic superstitions and moronic traditions – but Alharthi's depictions are stark. She shows their nastiness and violence. She shows what passes for their inner lives, and it's pathetic: shallow, self-absorbed, completely unaware of the humanity of anyone around them. Living in fear and anger, their only purpose to breed and perpetuate the cycles of hollowness.Since I never felt absorbed by the book, my mind often wandered: to the unspeakable evils of Middle Eastern religions; to the idiocies of our own (U.S.) culture. How are we any better? Are we? I think so, and I think it's because at least some people here act with kindness, and promote education, and actively see other people as human beings with rights.Anyhow, back to the book. I'm not glad to have read it, see no point to it other than a chronicle of the worst of humanity. Read Five Wounds instead.
This book never came together for me. It follows several generations of a family in Oman, but does so nonsequentially. The chapters each take the point of view of a different family member throughout the saga, but they could be anywhere from early on to fairly late in the family's timeline. Because of this, I never really found myself connecting with any of the characters in any real meaningful way. Compounding this for me is that there's quite a bit of vitriol and animosity in this family, either towards each other, towards other neighbors/people, or towards themselves, and this made it hard to actually find someone to like in the bunch of kind of vaguely unlikeable people.
The writing style was great though, and I feel like the author really had a good story here, it just wasn't my thing.
