In the Country of Men by Hisham Matar Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of In the Country of Men
Book Review: A quick read about Lybia
Summary: 4 Stars
I read this over a weekend. This poor boy is lost with what is happening in his country, his mother medicating herself and father in his own world... this child becomes codependent and tries to please others. No one stops and talks to this child and the one that does is a "bad man"
Who is a fault? Mother? Father? Government? All the above? What can be taken from this may be the importance of standing back and communicating with children especially in the hard times. He was somewhat forgotten. You feel the emptiness in his adulthood.
Book Review: Beautiful, wrenching
Summary: 4 Stars
This is a beautiful, wrenching book. Each page is dense with description and events, and the author makes each word count double or triple. This simplicity allows the story to come through with heartbreaking clarity.
My only quibble is that the boy seems a bit too naive to make his age, supposedly nine, seem realistic. I'd think that a nine-year-old might be a little more clued-in to some of what's going on in his country, especially a nine-year-old sensitive enough to be burdened with his mother's reminiscences. The fact that he didn't realize what her "medicine" and "illness" were also seems a bit hard to believe, but perhaps in an Islamic country a child wouldn't know.
Anyway, a beautiful, wonderful book. I look forward to other efforts by this author.
Book Review: Corrupting Everything In Its Grasp
Summary: 4 Stars
Reading this book is not a pleasant experience -- it has more to offer than mere pleasure. It grips you like a vise while you read it and haunts you for a long time afterwards. The book is short and claustrophobic, taking place almost entirely in one home. It is an intensive exploration of the way a regime like Qaddafi's corrupts everything in its grasp, from overall social structure to the workings of the individual mind.
The plot proceeds mostly by hints and implications, producing a gradually increasing sense of dread that is appropriate to this subject matter. The author's portrayal of the protagonist, a nine-year-old boy, is courageous and completely unsentimental, exposing the cruelty and selfishness of this child; his passionate, jealous attachment to his mother; and his ruined spirit as an adult.
Book Review: Disappointing
Summary: 3 Stars
In the Country of Men is basically story about life in Libya after the Muammar El Qaddafi's revolution. The year is 1979 and the narrator is nine years old Suleiman so we see revolution and its consequences through the eyes of nine years old boy. Boy who was much protected from the truth by his parents. It was interesting how some obvious facts (obvious for us, adults) are presented in some naïve language of a kid. We have impression that we are sailing through the sea surrounded with peaks of icebergs. The difference is that we (adults) are aware what's beneath the surface unlike the child who is telling us the story.
Then there is one nice picture about customs in the Muslim country and again position of woman in it. Suleiman's mother has been forced into the marriage when her brother saw her in the café with mixed company. Immediately "husband hunt" begins and the Scheherazade-like story. Therefore she was very unhappy with her marriage but in the same time in the husband's absence she's even more miserable and becomes "ill". Her "illness" is another peak of an iceberg and I must say I liked how Matar has described bond between mother and son making her "illness" something sacredly secret.
Suleiman's family is relatively rich. His father is businessman often on the trip abroad but also man who is part of democratic wing in new Libya. Wing you don't want to be part in post Revolutionary, Qaddafi's Libya; full of secret police, man in dark suits and sunglasses, land where national TV is broadcasting public execution of "traitors of the revolution"; where phone lines are tapped, etc. And inevitably consequence for being wrong winged came. But even then it's a peak of an iceberg.
Matar has done great job in conveying kid's confusion toward all the events around him. Politics is absolutely incomprehensible to him; he doesn't have a clue what his father supports or what he actually is doing in spite the fact that some glimpses have been presented accidentally to him. He is confronted with the mechanism of the regime when secret service is following their car or watching his house or taking away his friend's father but somehow he manages to not recognize that as something bad. He's explaining that in the most impossible ways. On the other hand his parents aren't teaching their son anything, they are worsening situation even more and make him confused `till the breaking point when he start to scream (finally!):" You always lie. I am not a child and you always lie." In the meanwhile I was so irritated with the kid and had to (too) often remind myself that he's only a child.
[Possibly SPOILER]
But what disappointed me the most are last few chapters when we are actually see that the story tells 24 Suleiman and not nine years old boy. I've found myself confused why on earth he made this unnecessary contrast with the rest of the novel who has convinced us that the narrator is a boy? The whole novel was through the eyes of a kid, who is not kid anymore and therefore it completely spoils the earlier approach. Now when I know Suleiman is an adult I'd expect story from a point of view of an adult person.
The story itself is nothing new. It's more/less the same story from a country under oppressive regime. There are only few specifically Libyan spices in this dish.
Indeed this is sad and sometimes poignant story but is that should be enough?
Book Review: Fabulous debut effort by Hisham Matar - a work to treasure
Summary: 5 Stars
I learned about Hisham Matar's debut work "In the Country of Men" from an occasional piece that the Financial Times does called "Read Your Way Around the World." In the list the FT published in 2006, a one- to two-line description of Matar's book reeled me in. How often does one get to read a semi-autobiographical piece about growing up Libya? Since it wasn't available yet in the US, I ordered it straight away from Amazon UK.
It's not often I can say that I 'treasured' a reading experience. But that was the case with Matar's book. It was worth every penny of extra shipping to have the book in my hands right away.
I can't do the work justice here. Seen through a young child's eyes, it depicts life under the initial days of Muammar Gaddafi's 'Great Revolution.' Gaddafi himself is an off-stage presence in the book - never named, he is referred to others simply as 'The Guide' (he's known officially as 'Brotherly Leader and Guide of the Revolution'). The majority of the action takes place in a single neighborhood. The reader sees how the revolution affects the fabric of Tripoli society. It's expertly and almost delicately told.
It's hard to believe Matar is a debut novelist. 'In the Country of Men' is a work to treasure.