I, the Divine

I, THE DIVINE: Rabih Amenaddine: W.W. Norton & Co.: 2002:Fiction: 320 pgs

I picked this book up completely on a lark and well, it was a pretty big disappointment. The book is told completely in "first chapters" as the main character, Sarah Nour Al-din , attempts to begin writing her life story to make some sense of it. Sarah is the daughter of a wealthy Lebanese Bureaucrat and a now tempermental and emotionally absent American mother. Sarah keeps trying to start her life story including the divorce of her parents, a serial killer sister, two ex-husbands, her current devastating break-up, and a budding art career to no avail. While I was at first really entertained by the idea of a book in first chapters this book turned out to be unnecessarily fragmented, plotless, and actually quite shallow. I never grew to care about any of the characters, parts of it seemed a little too contrived, and there were sporadic graphic (sex/rape) scenes that were context-less and, I felt, tasteless. I'm a sucker for sad books, but this was sad/deppressing without...well, without a reason (or really a plot).

BES