Florence of Arabia : A Novel

Rating:
Summary: This is a Fantastic Read
Review: Buckley again proves his great talent as a satirist. This is far better than "Thank You for Smoking" and a little better than " Little Green Men" both of which, were great. By the way the incident of the religious police shoving the female students back into the burning building is true. Despite the fact that this book is based on the truth some of it quite tragic ,as the above incident, Buckley manages to to make this great fun and a terrific read.

Rating:
Summary: Prince of Satire
Review: Florence of Arabia is completely hilarious. Only Christopher Buckley could make such enormous fun out of the Middle East. He doesn't spare any country, people or culture. I silently laughed all through the book and was bereft when it ended. Anyone with a love of satire will appreciate this book.

Rating:
Summary: Not his best
Review: I enjoy reading Mr. Buckley's novels especially "Thank You For Smoking", however I was very disappointed with this novel. The story never quite jelled. The story seemed rushed and disjointed. He also couldn't decide as to whether to make the novel serious or funny. It is kind of hard to joke about stoning women. I think he was trying to get his point across on how idiotic the Middle East is, but he didn't succeed here. This novel seemed like a rush job. I actually had to read a few of the paragraphs over again in order to try to figure out what he was trying to convey. I commend Mr. Buckley for trying to write about a difficult topic and by trying to throw in some humor along with it. I just wish he had spent a little more time trying to iron out his story.

Rating:
Summary: 4 1/2 stars
Review: I've always liked Christopher Buckley's books and this one is no exception. One of the main themes of the book is the Mideast's treatment of there women. The story mixes both satire and suspense while writing about a subject that can raise numerous sensibilities.
Buckley's done a fine job with this intelligent satire. The characters, as well as the originality, made this book well worth the time.

Highly recommended.

Rating:
Summary: great fun,why is this book being suppressed ?
Review: This book is outstanding fun and a fast read. Why is it being suppressed, as in the mealy mouthed review by Mr. Truhart from the Washington Post? Does Mr. Truhart work for the Saudi Embassy ? If this was a parody of Christianity or the USA, would Mr Truheart be as sensitive?? I don't think so. It is not the Arabs that are under attack all over the world, but the USA. Don't be fooled! This is Buckley's funniest work so far. It hits too close to home for the lackey's of our enemies.

Rating:
Summary: Highly Overrated
Review: This could be a one word review: overrated. The comic, the serious, the maudlin, the realistic aspects of this cartoon never meld together into a literary whole; rather they glaringly reverberate off each other producing a sense of a hurried cut-and-paste job. There a flashes of a genuinely humorous sensibility, but they are too few and too poorly placed, often coming after a melodramatic episode, producing a high level of dissonance. Not to horrify the author with a PC remark, but many scenes and character-deliniations are truly offensive, and if one substituted 'black', 'Jewish', or 'Catholic', etc., for 'Arab', the disgust level would would be off the chart.
Certainly a potential reader should make up his own mind.
My best advice: don't get the book dirty, as you may decide to return it after reading the first few rollicking pages and then arriving at a turgid bog.

Rating:
Summary: Just One Darned Fine Story!
Review: This story begins when Nazrah, the youngest and prettiest of the wives of the Wasabi (read Saudi Arabia here) ambassador to the United States, His Excellency Prince Bawad bin-Rumallah al-Hamooj, gets into a messy auto accident while driving under the influence. She asks for asylum, but is shipped back to Wasabi, where she tries to escape the prince's harem and is executed.

This upsets or heroine, Firenze "Florence" Farfaletti, who was Nazrah's friend. Florence is The deputy to the deputy assistant secretary for Near East Affairs and she comes up with an idea to free the women of the Arab world, by starting up a satellite television channel in tiny emirate of Matar (pronounced Mutter, sound like another country in that part of the world?). She plans on educating the Arab women and showing them what they're missing out on.

Her plan goes well at first and TV Matar is a huge success, but then everything goes wrong and all of a sudden Flo and her entire staff find their lives at risk as Flo figures out that she's just part of a plan in a grand scheme to alter the political landscape of the Middle East

Like all of Chris Buckley's books, this one is uproariously funny while taking on a serious subject. In today's world it's not PC to poke fun at the Moslem (or any other for that matter) religion, but Buckley does, but then he pokes fun at everything. However, the true test of this and any other story is it peopled with characters we care about, will we laugh with them, cry with them, remember them after we close the pages for the final time and in "Florence of Arabia" Mr. Buckley meets and passes the test with flying colors.

Rating:
Summary: A comedy?
Review: This was a quick fun read about a US State Department employee turned Agent Provocateur (yes, the French play a role) in a thinly-fictionalized Middle East.

I won't cover the plot points because I don't want to spoil the surprise. Suffice it that I laughed out loud when I saw the title in the "New Releases" section at B&N, read the first couple of chapters, bought it, and read it in an evening - laughing most of the way (there are some sad parts, but there are more outrageously funny ones.)

Rating:
Summary: No Role for Peter O'Toole
Review: Those who do not like this satrical novel, probably take themselves and their view of the world too seriously. Christopher Buckley has the gift of taking a situation and writing about it in a compelling and entertaining way which delivers more truth than fiction, often to the discomfort of those whose toes are trod on the hardest.

A character in the book, referred to as Uncle Sam, sums up the situation that has been created well into the book quite neatly when he opines: "As I recall, the mission was to empower Arab women and bring about some kind of stability in the Middle East. There were those who said, 'Are you out of your mind?' Others said, 'We've tried everything else, why not give it a shot? What harm can it do??" Ha! And how did it all turn out? With a coup detat - and how appropriate to use the French term for it - against the only stable country in the region. Not only did it not work, but it brought about the further enslavement of two point five million Arab women, along with the empwerment of a psychotic race-car driver, to say nothing of a whopping increase in Wasabi oil prices that may well determine the outcome of the next presidential election. And did I mention France getting naval bases in the Gulf?

And that's far from the end of the story.

It's a fun ride and done so very well. Hop on and enjoy the trip.