EIGHT MONTHS ON GHAZZAH STREET: Hilary Mantel

Product Information

Who knew that the author of Wolf Hall and Bring up the Bodies had lived in Saudi Arabia? I didn't, but once I started reading the book, I thought "Holy Smokes! She's in my head!" Tension throughout the novel is sustained by the ‘memo’ that forms a prologue. It provides advice to all expat staff of the construction company to exercise extreme caution in the wake of recent tragic events and to refrain from commenting on the deaths… an aura of lurking menace, not to mention the tantalizing riddle of the strange sounds that emanate from the supposedly vacant apartment above the Shores' temporary quarters. Confined in her flat, she finds her sense of self beginning to dissolve. She hears footsteps, sounds of distress from the supposedly empty flat above. She has only constantly changing rumours to hang on to, and no one with whom to share her creeping unease.

When a crime does occur, the expat advice is not to call in authorities, because often it’s the witnesses who end up in gaol and the crime is never solved anyway. Frances struggles with this cynicism: she doesn’t want to make judgements about Saudi society and she cringes when her oblivious fellow expats cross the line into cultural superiority and racism. But she is caught in a bind: hypocrisy and corruption is everywhere, and she is not able to ignore it because she is repeatedly warned by her husband’s employers, colleagues, and their wives, that she must be aware of it and yet act as if it doesn’t exist. It is (literally) dangerous to do otherwise.of Climate'' -- the sort of event that makes one question the point of faith, of philosophy, of conscience, of fine moral distinctions -- is immediately preceded by Ralph Eldred's extended, faintly self-regarding philosophical That's fine," she said, "but just try to ensure that what we're given doesn't include Pollard. Do you think they'll all be like him?"

The development of this mystery and its denouement are not the most effective pieces of the novel. The frustration and futility of trying to find out exactly how the tragedy unfolds is more poignant than the actual events. In fact, this gothic part of the story is almost a subplot, or a symbol for the much more mundane corruption that is portrayed throughout the novel.A very good -- though not always pleasant -- book, of an ugly and too-little known world, and with a decent story as well. The apartment building on Ghazzah Street offers some diversion -- and some mystery, as there are sounds coming from a supposedly empty apartment. Frances closed her eyes again. Drifting, she caught bits of their conversation: jargon, catchphrases. At home, at her widowed mother's house in York, she had been reading books about her destination. Despite her skepticism, her better knowledge,

It’s set in Saudi Arabia, a highly secretive and repressive society, where the religious police keep a close watch on everything, there are strict laws about what you can wear in public and women are not allowed to drive.The memo at the start, we assumed was pre-action. If there had been names mentioned or more obvious hints, we would have paid more attention to it. Described on its cover as "A Middle Eastern Turn of the Shrew with an insidious power to grip", I was drawn to the book in a way that I wouldn't with her dictionary-sized hist-fic novels.

Certainly do. They're always building, you see, money no object, but they don't think ahead. They build a hospital and then decide to put a road through it. Fancy a new palace? Out with the bulldozer. A map would be out of date as soon Oh, I'm sure he'll be there," she said. Or someone will. Jeff Pollard. At least he'd be a familiar face. "I've got numbers to ring, in case anything goes wrong. And I could take a taxi." Mantel paints the varied expat communities (and the ugly corporations that do business there) very well, her opprobrium doled out equally to natives and foreigners alike.When you get here and everything’s so strange, you feel isolated and got at – that’s Phase One. But then you learn how to manage daily life, and for a while the place begins to seem normal, and you’ll even defend the way things are done here, you’ll start explaining to newcomers that it’s all right really – that’s Phase Two. You coast along, and then It was at the Holiday Inn, Gaborone--but in the bar, not in the coffee shop--that Andrew had met Jeff Pollard. They had run into him once before, in Lusaka, and not liked him particularly; but now Pollard was offering a job, and Andrew needed one. His it strange from three paces, never mind three thousand miles. Could the man be right, she wondered, had someone been bribed on her behalf? It seemed such a small thing, obtaining a visa for one unimportant woman to join her unimportant