I, The Divine: A Novel In First Chapters

I, the Divine: A Novel in First Chapters

From Publishers Weekly Talk about writer's block; Sarah Nour El-Din never manages to get past the first chapter of the memoir she aspires to pen. Alameddine's innovative novel collects several dozen of (fictional) Sarah's aborted attempts, a structural gimmick that works to create a revealing composite of a character who can't seem to finish her own story. Sarah is the Beirut-born daughter of a love match that went sour; her Lebanese father sent her American mother back to the United States when he tired of her and married a traditional Lebanese wife instead. Saniya, Sarah's stepmother, disapproves of her athletic gifts and packs her off to a strict convent school. Sarah, named after Sarah Bernhardt by her grandfather and just as mischievous and dramatic as the famous actress, grows up in wartorn 1970s Beirut, longing for American freedoms. She emigrates to New York with her first husband, Omar, and resists his attempts to force her to move back to Lebanon, losing custody of her son, Kamal, in the process. Over the next several decades, she marries and divorces again, suffers a devastating breakup with a controlling lover and becomes a well-known painter. Alameddine, a distinguished painter himself, is best known for Koolaids, a novel in which a Lebanese-American gay protagonist discovers he is HIV-positive. His Sarah is a compelling, believable character who struggles to establish an identity as she navigates between cultures, but one wishes that the novel's structure did not mirror her confusion so faithfully. Some vignettes are beautifully written and touching, but others seem rambling or irrelevant. Ultimately, the novel's clever framing device is also its weakness, as the reader yearns for the satisfaction of a linear story. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc. Through a series of first chapters of unfinished novels and memoirs, Sarah Nour El-Din, a Lebanese-American artist, narrates the story of her life, from growing up in a hybrid family in war-torn Beirut and her own self-imposed exile in the United States to her struggle to deal with her family problems and her determination to tell her own story. 20,000 first printing. Review Rabih Alameddine's new novel unfolds like a secret, guarded too long, which is at last pushing toward the light. -- Los Angeles Times Book Review, 16 Deceember 2001[A] work that while marked by radical formal innovation, manages to be warm, sad, funny and moving. -- Michael Chabon, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay About the Author Rabih Alameddine is a writer and artist living in San Francisco. He is the author of the critically acclaimed Koolaids: The Art of War and The Perv.