Review by Alan Cheuse - San Francisco Chronicle
Sunday, March 26, 2006
Camilla Gibb is a Toronto fiction writer who originally trained in social anthropology. If her latest novel, "Sweetness in the Belly," is any evidence, her fieldwork in Ethiopia seems to have paid off in surprising ways. This engrossing book -- the story of Lilly, an English-born nurse who, after the death of her hippie parents in North Africa, is raised by a Moroccan Sufi scholar and then emigrates to Harar, Ethiopia -- seems utterly convincing and authentic.
"Each morning ... we sat in the doorway of the dark room ... and recited quietly for an hour against the rhythmic sounds of Nouria on her knees scrubbing clothes in a big metal basin. ... It was here that we began in earnest. Listen and repeat. Listen and repeat. Line by line, verse by verse, just the way the Great Abdal had taught me."
The glimpse "Sweetness in the Belly" offers into the intimate lives of Muslim women and Ethiopian life and clan and national politics is sharp and moving, an unexpected book-length postcard from a part of the world most of us have never visited.
Camilla Gibb
Sweetness in the Belly
THE PENGUIN PRESS; 352 PAGES; $23.95
Thursday, October 12, 2006
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Thursday, October 12, 2006
Emotionally charged postcard from afar
Review by Alan Cheuse - San Francisco Chronicle
Sunday, March 26, 2006
Camilla Gibb is a Toronto fiction writer who originally trained in social anthropology. If her latest novel, "Sweetness in the Belly," is any evidence, her fieldwork in Ethiopia seems to have paid off in surprising ways. This engrossing book -- the story of Lilly, an English-born nurse who, after the death of her hippie parents in North Africa, is raised by a Moroccan Sufi scholar and then emigrates to Harar, Ethiopia -- seems utterly convincing and authentic.
"Each morning ... we sat in the doorway of the dark room ... and recited quietly for an hour against the rhythmic sounds of Nouria on her knees scrubbing clothes in a big metal basin. ... It was here that we began in earnest. Listen and repeat. Listen and repeat. Line by line, verse by verse, just the way the Great Abdal had taught me."
The glimpse "Sweetness in the Belly" offers into the intimate lives of Muslim women and Ethiopian life and clan and national politics is sharp and moving, an unexpected book-length postcard from a part of the world most of us have never visited.
Camilla Gibb
Sweetness in the Belly
THE PENGUIN PRESS; 352 PAGES; $23.95
Sunday, March 26, 2006
Camilla Gibb is a Toronto fiction writer who originally trained in social anthropology. If her latest novel, "Sweetness in the Belly," is any evidence, her fieldwork in Ethiopia seems to have paid off in surprising ways. This engrossing book -- the story of Lilly, an English-born nurse who, after the death of her hippie parents in North Africa, is raised by a Moroccan Sufi scholar and then emigrates to Harar, Ethiopia -- seems utterly convincing and authentic.
"Each morning ... we sat in the doorway of the dark room ... and recited quietly for an hour against the rhythmic sounds of Nouria on her knees scrubbing clothes in a big metal basin. ... It was here that we began in earnest. Listen and repeat. Listen and repeat. Line by line, verse by verse, just the way the Great Abdal had taught me."
The glimpse "Sweetness in the Belly" offers into the intimate lives of Muslim women and Ethiopian life and clan and national politics is sharp and moving, an unexpected book-length postcard from a part of the world most of us have never visited.
Camilla Gibb
Sweetness in the Belly
THE PENGUIN PRESS; 352 PAGES; $23.95
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment