Skip to main content

An Unnecessary Woman (Book Review by Harshpreet Kaur)


An Unnecessary Woman is a tale painted on the backdrop of a childless, alone seventy-two year old Aaliyah who recalls from an early age that she was never loved by those around her, and in order to fill that aching, gaping hole where love should have been she sneaked off to literature. Aaliyah has been translating literature over the course of her life to the local language and the book opens with Aaliyah completing the translation of Austerlitz by W. G. Sebald, and the dilemma that follows: of choosing which book to translate next.
When I read a book, I try my best, not always successfully, to let the wall crumble just a bit, the barricade that separates me from the book. I try to be involved.
I am Raskalnikov. I am K. I am Humbert and Lolita. 
I am you.
If you read these pages and think I’m the way I am because I lived through a civil war, you can’t feel my pain. If you believe you’re not like me because one woman, and only one, Hannah, chose to be my friend, then you’re unable to empathize.
While we, the readers, fall in love with her falling in love with literature, the novel subtly deals with heavy concepts like grief, depression and unresolved issues with your parents and how devastating the lasting effect can be on both the suffering and all those affected by the everlasting effects. To escape all the trauma of reality, Aaliyah is seen escaping into museums, old bookstores, her vinyl collection and of course, literature. She’s constantly having literature banters with herself just to entertain and distract herself.
The author, Rabih Alameddine, loves the city of Beirut and it is evident in the pages of An Unnecessary Woman but on the same hand he also gives us a peek in the Lebanese Civil War as some key memories of Aaliyah’s life and turning point in the novel are placed in that time period and thus tainting Aaliyah’s memory bank with that of a war.
As described by many others before me, the book is essentially a love letter to literature and how eloquently it effects Aaliyah and her stream of consciousness. The story of the seventy-two-year-old woman with blue hair is a must read if you are looking for something filled with literary references or even if you are just an admirer of literature.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Sections

This library consist of more than 30,000 books and 52 journals, 40 magazines & 14 newspapers. The library staff do the best to reach every student through library committee of students as well as of staff Members. In the library there are - Reference Section (Encyclopaedias,Dictionaries, Year Books) Autobiographies & biographies section Career section( includes all books on career ) Languages Section ( English, Punjabi,Hindi +Audio tapes) Home Science Section( includes books on Home Science and Fashion Designing) Fine-Arts Section Commerce Section (inclues books on UG(under graduates and post graduates) Psychology Section Sociology section Public Adminstration Section Physical-Education Section

College Profile

College Profile : ----- Guru Nanak Khalsa College for Women Model Town, Gujarkhan Campus is one of the premier institutions of learning. This post graduate college was established in the year 1969, in commemoration of the 500 th birth anniversary of Guru Nanak Devji. The founder architects & stalwarts of the institution were Sardar Bahadur Bishen Singh and S. Sant Singh Gujarkhani the president and General Secretary respectively of Guru Nanak Education Trust(Gujarkhan). The Trust had its roots in the Rawalpindi(Pakistan) since 1919 and in 1954, after partition, again dedicated itself to the cause of education and spreading the light of knowledge among the ignorant masses which in itself was challenging, taking into consideration ,the social and economic conditions of those days.The real strength and inspiration behind the institute are highly enlightened and spirited members of the Governing body , under the stewardship of S. Paramjit Singh Sarna as its President and Prof Gurbir...

Functions Performed in the Library

Acquistion of Books We ordered the books on the recommdations of faculty according to the requirement of the students .We also buy books which are for extra study and also in the interst of students and fraternity. Classification & Cataloguing After receieving the books ,these are accessioned in the accession register .when accessioning is compeleted ,classification of books started on basis of Deway Decimal Classification.AACR2 (Anglo American Cataloguing Rules) are followed for cataloguing purpose. Then these books are placed in the almirahs according to the ir classification number. Issue-return of Books Any student of the campus can read while sitting in the library as well as get issued these books whenever they want. Book-Bank To help the needy students we are having a book-bank in the library.These books are issued to the students for full session. Library Committee To reach every student we are having a committee of students.These students work daily with us and spend two ...