Celestial Bodies

Despite my hit-and-miss relationship (mostly misses) with Booker prize winners, I really wanted to love Celestial Bodies. It's the first Omani authored novel I have read and its focus on the changes in women's lives across an extended period of time appealed to me. I think Alharthi includes three generations of women although I did struggle to maintain a good sense of how the characters were linked and in which eras they belonged because of how the story jumps around. If you prefer a linear narrative, this probably won't be the best book choice for you!

Alharthi touches on several aspects of Oman's turbulent past including colonialism, slavery, religious wars and emigration. Despite it's small village setting though, Celestial Bodies manages to feel as though it speaks for the whole country rather than a single community. I enjoyed that this is very much a book about Omani women and I didn't get any sense that it was written with an eye to Western audiences so it felt authentic throughout. Moments such as Masouda's isolation reminded me of The Yellow Wallpaper, but Celestial Bodies doesn't bemoan women's place in Omani society. Instead I felt Alharthi placed her characters simply before readers in order to show us their experiences and expectations.

I did love Alharthi's rich poetic prose. Even in translation I could appreciate certain beautifully composed sentences and imagine the original Arabic must be even more satisfying. I found myself becoming immersed in chapters, particularly those centred around Mayya, Khawla or Azzan, but didn't like abruptly being thrust into a different life or era by the ensuing chapter. At times I felt almost as though Celestial Bodies was a short story collection. Of course the characters do eventually all connect and, by the end of the book, I could envisage the family's history but, in order to fully enjoy this story, I wanted a stronger narrative flow.

This book helped solidify that I need to be more selective with what I read as audiobook. I’m giving this a 4 because I think if I’d read it as a book I’d have enjoyed it more. As it is, because this was a nonlinear story with many, many characters, I lost the thread multiple times. I like what I gathered from the story, but I definitely lost track of who was who and the relations between people. I think it would have been hard to track in a book as well, but it would have been easier to flip around and remind myself of the connections.

I loved that this was a story of multiple generations around a time of great change. The characters all react differently to “new” ways of living. Family dynamics in this kind of scenario are fascinating to read.

I don’t have anything much more than that to say - I enjoyed learning about everyone and seeing their stories play out. It’s the kind of story I’d love to see as a mini-series. It would be something like the Omani version of Downton Abbey.

Honestly, I feel like I must have missed something. This follows several generations of a family in Oman, mostly focusing on their relationships and the way things change as the generations pass by. It jumps around the timeline seemingly arbitrarily, but is largely focused on Abdallah's musings as he takes a flight to Frankfurt, always coming back to him on the plane.

But it doesn't seem to actually say anything for all the time it took me to read it. It seemed like there was some sort of revelation Abdallah is supposed to have, but after a whole book of things being relatively straightforward the ending is some sort of abstract fever dream? Hardly anyone's story seems to tie up in a way that is at all satisfying or even, you know, tied up. There's some mystery around what happened to Abdallah's mother, and then the reveal is from (yet another) someone we were hardly familiar with.

And I guess that's probably part of the point, that people's lives don't turn out like a storybook. But it was wildly unsatisfying to read about.

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.