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Rating: 
Summary: Transcending Borders
Review: A friend passed this book along to me with the usual 'You have GOT to read this...' commentary. The cover of the copy I was lent has this quote from the Literary Review: "Marvelously Vivid. I was reminded of The Handmaid's Tale." Being a big fan of The Handmaid's Tale , I was intrigued. The sheer reality this book describes is disturbing. Extremely disturbing...at least to a women who was born and raised in the United States after 1969 (like me). The book get's inside the character's heads while vividly describing what's going on around them, and the sheer maddening aspect of never really knowing what was happening outside of the walls of your home - of knowing that you had little to no real power over your existence. It's told from the point of view of four different women, with each women getting a separate section of the book. this is an excellent way to arrange this novel because, not only do ! you get to see each of the characters from both the inside and the outside (e.g.: they describe each other), but you also get an in-depth look at life as it is for very different women. For example: Tamr goes on a hunger strike in order to force the male head of her family to allow her to go to school and learn to read, and who witnesses the brutal punishment enacted on a young woman who becomes pregnant out of wedlock. Of all of the women, her story is the most inspiring because of her sheer determination to become self sufficient. After being divorced twice (men are able to divorce their wives at any time, and all it requires is the proper documentation which is delivered to the woman after everything is said and done. She doesn't even know what's happening until someone walks in, hands her the form, and says, pack up and go to your parents house...), she's decided she wants nothing more of marriage and manages to pull! strings and bust heads (e.g.: she actually walks into ! government offices...she's supposed to send in a man to do it for her), until she has the finances and documentation allowing her to open her own beauty shop. It's amazing what the woman had to go through to open a hair salon! Apparently, the author's first novel was banned in several Middle Eastern countries due to it's explicit descriptions of female sexuality. I would not be surprised if this novel were also banned for the same reasons. I imagine this novel should leave a person thinking how lucky she is to be living someplace other than the Middle East, but I actually found I could relate to many things the characters described, though on a less extreme level. That's part of the reason this book is so disturbing and is so similar to the Handmaid's Tale - it's not to hard to imagine your own world becoming very similar to the one Hanan describes.
Rating:
Summary: AngstGrrl review
Review: A friend passed this book along to me with the usual 'You have GOT to read this...' commentary. The cover of the copy I was lent has this quote from the Literary Review: "Marvelously Vivid. I was reminded of The Handmaid's Tale." Being a big fan of The Handmaid's Tale , I was intrigued. The sheer reality this book describes is disturbing. Extremely disturbing...at least to a women who was born and raised in the United States after 1969 (like me). The book get's inside the character's heads while vividly describing what's going on around them, and the sheer maddening aspect of never really knowing what was happening outside of the walls of your home - of knowing that you had little to no real power over your existence. It's told from the point of view of four different women, with each women getting a separate section of the book. this is an excellent way to arrange this novel because, not only do ! you get to see each of the characters from both the inside and the outside (e.g.: they describe each other), but you also get an in-depth look at life as it is for very different women. For example: Tamr goes on a hunger strike in order to force the male head of her family to allow her to go to school and learn to read, and who witnesses the brutal punishment enacted on a young woman who becomes pregnant out of wedlock. Of all of the women, her story is the most inspiring because of her sheer determination to become self sufficient. After being divorced twice (men are able to divorce their wives at any time, and all it requires is the proper documentation which is delivered to the woman after everything is said and done. She doesn't even know what's happening until someone walks in, hands her the form, and says, pack up and go to your parents house...), she's decided she wants nothing more of marriage and manages to pull! strings and bust heads (e.g.: she actually walks into ! government offices...she's supposed to send in a man to do it for her), until she has the finances and documentation allowing her to open her own beauty shop. It's amazing what the woman had to go through to open a hair salon! Apparently, the author's first novel was banned in several Middle Eastern countries due to it's explicit descriptions of female sexuality. I would not be surprised if this novel were also banned for the same reasons. I imagine this novel should leave a person thinking how lucky she is to be living someplace other than the Middle East, but I actually found I could relate to many things the characters described, though on a less extreme level. That's part of the reason this book is so disturbing and is so similar to the Handmaid's Tale - it's not to hard to imagine your own world becoming very similar to the one Hanan describes.
Rating: 
Summary: A Lebanese View of the Gulf
Review: Having been living in the Gulf for several years when I read _Women of Sand and Myrrh_ (which was freely available at our campus library there, by the way), I was struck most of all by the novel's harsh and perhaps distorted view of Gulf cultures. For instance, the view is attributed to Tamr at one point that the Lebanese Suha has essentially brought "civilization" to her desert world, a view that resembles what I heard occasionally from Palestinian or Lebanese students studying in the Gulf but never from the local women. Other Westerners reading the novel as a look into "the Arab world" may not realize how various, sometimes even divided, that world is and how different Gulf cultures can be from other Arab cultures--both more repressive in some ways and more egalitarian in others. (Another view of the very robust and often outspoken women's cultures in Gulf societies is offered in Leila Ahmed's memoir _Border Passage_, which includes a chapter on a stint she did as an educator in the United Arab Emirates.)
Rating: 
Summary: Things you can't learn anywhere else
Review: I picked this book up a while ago in the wake of reading Abdelrahman Munif's _Cities of Salt_ trilogy and some books by Naguib Mahfouz. Like Munif, al-Shaykh is mostly a journalist, and I find that the material, while interesting and somewhat informative, is presented drably, with little flavour or variety. The subject matter of the book, which can briefly be said to deal with women and their place in a fundamentalist society, must be set aside. We can all admire a new perspective on lives that most likely remain mysterious. However, here the concern is with the artful presentation of material. If the author had allowed her imagination more freedom, and if she was able to fashion women who were distinct from each other (with the possible exception of Suzanne), then the story would have lifted off the ground and approached the realm of art. Regrettably, it doesn't. The men are caricatures, and the narrative voice is not sufficiently adjusted to each story. For those looking to gather some understanding of life in these circumstances, the book provides much; for those looking for the transcendence of art, they will find it elsewhere.
Rating: 
Summary: Parched
Review: I picked this book up a while ago in the wake of reading Abdelrahman Munif's _Cities of Salt_ trilogy and some books by Naguib Mahfouz. Like Munif, al-Shaykh is mostly a journalist, and I find that the material, while interesting and somewhat informative, is presented drably, with little flavour or variety. The subject matter of the book, which can briefly be said to deal with women and their place in a fundamentalist society, must be set aside. We can all admire a new perspective on lives that most likely remain mysterious. However, here the concern is with the artful presentation of material. If the author had allowed her imagination more freedom, and if she was able to fashion women who were distinct from each other (with the possible exception of Suzanne), then the story would have lifted off the ground and approached the realm of art. Regrettably, it doesn't. The men are caricatures, and the narrative voice is not sufficiently adjusted to each story. For those looking to gather some understanding of life in these circumstances, the book provides much; for those looking for the transcendence of art, they will find it elsewhere.
Rating: 
Summary: A Mediocre Story about Shallow People.
Review: I read this book with a group of both men and women, and we were all rather disappointed - some by the uniformity of the writing style even when the narrator changed, others with the underdeveloped characterization and utter disregard of the protagonists for their children, still others for the lack of cultural insight revealed within the story. Personally, I liked it; but it was frustrating because, while the book was easy to read, the author's point was never quite clear. I think I was supposed to sympathize for women living in an ultra-conservative, male-dominated society, but the thread I mainly noticed was that selfish people are never happy. Perhaps the arid, Middle-Eastern setting supplied an accidental allegory, reminding the reader that without love, any country can be a desert.
Rating:
Summary: Women of all cultures
Review: The book started out slow, but as the book progressed, I had to go back to the beginning and reread it. The stories of each of the women give an outside perspective of the other women. As you're reading about one of the women, you get a mental picture of some of the other characters as they are mentioned from her perspective. Then, you get to see another perspective of these women as they are introduced in different chapters. I really liked this book and thought it was very creatively put together.
Rating:
Summary: Pretty much worthless
Review: This book doesnt have any insight if this is what you are looking for it won't be found here. It is a cheap entertainment at best. If you want to know about Muslim/Arab culture(s) there are much more suitable places to find your information. This is just a book to tease the ideas and misconceptions which are so prevalent today.
Rating:
Summary: Things you can't learn anywhere else
Review: This is an extraordinary novel by any standard. Al-Shaykh's willingness to go deep into the hearts of her (yes, sometimes shallow) characters reveals the hidden depths of life behind the veil, and so much more. This is powerfully anti-lyrical writing, and important reading for anyone who wants a deeper understanding of what's happening (and not happening) culturally between men and women, East and West, Islam and the rest of the world. Anyone who dares enter here will venture far beyond the politically correct, when it comes to female sexuality and lies, secrets, silences, customs, and intuition.
Rating:
Summary: Transcending Borders
Review: Yes, this novel deals with four women (Suha,Nur, Suzanne, and Tamr) living in an un-named Middle Eastern country...but the problems that many of the women face have echoes of the same problems that an average housewife experiences in Middle America...Suzanne's husband is unloving and cold, she feels fat and undesirable....Suha must live in a place that is far from her home for her husband's job, and her intelliegence is being stifled in this oppressive society, she yearns for freedom...Tamr is going to make it work, she will work within the system to achieve her dreams...and Nur drowns in her hedonistic pleasures, she alleviates her loneliness with lovers, cigarettes, and riches, yet they still don't complete her. All these problems can be found in intelligent women who are not being fulfilled by their society or men or domestic life....buried within this novel is a connection for all women.... while i read it i was enthralled with all the descriptions of food, and horrified at the heavy veils the women must wear in public and in the presence of men and the other social conventions a woman must endure...the men weren't all together despicable either, they were just humans trying to make it....This novel had universal themes (women trying to find happiness, love and most importantly self-fulfillment)peppered with vivid images of a certain type of Middle Eastern society.... a good read!
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