Eight Months on Ghazzah Street (1988) is the third novel by English author Dame Hilary Mantel, who won the Man Booker Prize in 2009 and 2012. Additionally, I didn’t know if the narrator was a genuine alter-ego of the author (whose experiences the book mirrors) or if she was meant to come across as a self-righteous snob.

Mantel's depiction of the mortal threat of living in a country that has no rule of law is devastatingly realistic. There is also the issue of the expatriate community and how they behave (book clubs, casual affairs, dinner parties), which Frances also finds difficulty in adapting to. Mantel’s portrait of expat life in Saudi Arabia in the mid 1980s is not a positive one – and the characters are all unlikeable, however I still found a lot to like in this novel. What I did like about the book was the foreboding and claustrophobic atmosphere full of secrets and corruption. At the beginning of the book, Andrew’s contract is coming to an end and he has not found other employment.As her world narrows, Frances spending time learning about Islam from the Quran, writing her diary, cooking, and speaking to her neighbours, Frances’s sense of unease only grows. Much of the book is about the difficulty of coping with Saudi customs or, in the case of the old hands, how they have managed to find their way around the system.

The Pakistani neighbor of the protagonist, Frances Shore, tries to reassure her by explaining that they don't really stone adulteresses any more -- they throw a few token stones then shoot her. We are reminded again and again of the restrictions on women, the religious vigilantism, the corruption, and so on. Con il marito geologo si trasferirono poi per qualche anno in Arabia Saudita, dove scrisse il suo primo romanzo pubblicato: Every Day is Mother's Day, che uscì nel 1985; ma intanto teneva anche dei diari che certamente stanno alla base di questo romanzo ( Eight Months on Ghazzah Street), che uscì nel 1988, dopo la continuazione del primo: Vacant Posession (1986). Those familiar with Mantel’s works will know that there is likely to be something nasty in the woodshed. Here's just one example of the fantastic writing: "He kept his eyes from the woman as if she wore an aura of barbed wire.Dopo l’iniziale alienante solitudine, inizia qualche forma di contatto con altre donne, vicine di casa, ma rimane sempre una decisiva distanza di cultura e un ingestibile senso di incomprensione (ad un certo punto Frances sbotta con Andrew: «No wonder they have such a bloody awful religion», visto che vivono in un luogo dove non cresce niente). Soon they're having sex, but Connell doesn't want anyone to know and Marianne doesn't mind; either she really doesn't care, or it's all she thinks she deserves. Yet, almost immediately following this exchange, Fairfax shows Frances a photo of his wife, who he describes as a "giantess," a woman who married him only because she could walk down the aisle in high heels rather than "shuffling up the aisle in gym shoes and bending her knees.

Frances is still in the country when the novel ends, now settled in a sparsely inhabited compound surrounded by freeways, but the reader is oh so happy to get an exit visa and leave this oppressive world. And certainly some of the Saudi problems, such as the corruption, are abetted by the culture of the Western companies there to make fast and easy money. Andrew, a civil engineer, is there to make a lot of money by working on the construction of a new Ministry Building.My husband, our two young sons and I lived in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia from 1983 to 1991, almost the same time-frame as Hillary Mantel lived in Jeddah on the western side. Further discussion reveals that one of their female British expat friends who is being divorced by her British husband (for having an affair) is now living in poverty with her children. Poco più che ventenne, per anni, si dedicò a un grande romanzo che ha come personaggi alcuni protagonisti di primo piano della Rivoluzione francese. Lo que más me interesa es la forma en que el personaje de Frances se sitúa frente a las mujeres musulmanas de la novela: por mucho que se esfuerce en entender ciertas actitudes, Frances se siente cada vez más y más encerrada y confinada, sin apenas libertad para tomar la más mínima decisión. They're the smartest kids in their class, and they forge an intimacy when Connell picks his mother up from Marianne's house.