Bitter Orange Tree offers plenty of detail about Omani life between world wars ... Evocative reading ... Committing Bint Aamir’s life to writing transforms her story into one that inspires reverence, rather than pity. Bint Aamir takes on a mythic quality...and her unchanging appearance, wearing the same garments all her life, gives her a sense of permanence amid the sudden changes in her country. In Alharthi’s world, it’s not only the future that holds promise; the past has possibility and opportunities for revision, too.
As before, the author continues to demonstrate a deep sympathy for the ways women suffer and survive the vicissitudes of a society that gives them little agency. And fans will recognize Alharthi’s fluid treatment of chronology and setting, once again gorgeously translated by Booth ... Alharthi, who earned a Ph.D. at the University of Edinburgh and now teaches in Oman, can simultaneously emphasize the universality of her characters’ feelings and the unique cultural context of their experiences. Bitter Orange Tree is a story of mourning and alienation, and Alharthi has developed a tone that captures that sense of being suspended in the timelessness of grief ... If Bitter Orange Tree has a weakness, it’s this emphasis on the narrator’s static grief, which may tax readers’ sympathy and then exceed their interest. But fortunately, the swirling current of the narrative pushes against the narrow confines of Zuhour’s extravagant mourning. In the undulating rhythms of this story, we’re repeatedly drawn into the early details of Bint Aamir’s life as a woman in Oman ... Aside from how emotionally painful that sounds, frozen in torment and tongue-tied in destiny are particularly challenging conditions to sustain in a novel, which demands at least a modicum of dynamic movement ... this exquisitely sensitive novel spins its wheels without going anywhere.
Alharthi keeps her reader emotionally invested in both women. She emphasizes their tight bond by switching between one character's past and the other's present and braiding together their experiences. Some of her metaphors might feel heavy-handed (a kite in the wind, that titular tree) but for the most part her novel is an elegant meditation on remembering and forgetting.
... the reader who takes Jokha Alharthi’s Bitter Orange Tree neat, undiluted by context, expectations and breathless New Yorker reviews, will find an uncommon work of literature ... It is a compact narrative that encompasses an amazing number of vividly drawn characters, each with a compelling story ... we find that rare translation that is seamless without flattening the prose ... There are no awkward phrasings or intrusive explanations here — we are swept along with Zuhour’s story and her memories of Oman.
The writing is vivid in the descriptions of village life in Oman, but the contemporary setting of the main character, Zuhour, is blandly indistinct. For a book that is supposed to show, according to the back cover, a 'young Omani woman building a life for herself in Britain,' there is very little sense of that life at all ... All of which would be fine, if those stories created any kind of narrative build or sense of character development—for Zuhour or Bint Amir. Instead, there are a series of vignettes, of snippets of memories and family lore, all focused on family and love, how one thwarts—or supports—the other ... What, in the end, is the book about? A series of vignettes offers different views of family constellations, of love shared and thwarted, of parental disapproval and constraints. The writing is interesting on each page, even if there is no narrative build, no compelling emotional journey taken by any of the many characters. Perhaps the book is meant as a series of appetizers, with no main meal. For those who enjoy that kind of reading, dig in. Others will need to look elsewhere.
... lyrical ... Unlike a conventional family saga with a chronological timeline, author Alharthi chooses to blend the stories of the three generations. Sometimes the scene changes seem random; at other times they are prompted by Zuhour’s thoughts or dreams. This lends the novel an air of magical realism as well as playing into one of its major themes: how the actions and experiences of previous generations affect their successors ... These stories of the elders, so beautifully imbued with elements of Oman’s landscape and culture, present as myths, allowing Alharthi to demonstrate her literary flair and ponder the qualities of their composite parts, namely language ... What can challenge the terrible power of language? Alharthi shows that desire—an emotion so intense that it cannot be put into words—is a strong contender ... Like its title, the novel ends on a bittersweet tone. Its tragic heroes are all the more memorable for it.
Beautifully translated by Marilyn Booth in the poignant, lyrical style of the original Arabic, Bitter Orange Tree is a deeply emotional, largely autobiographical novel permeated with regret, even guilt ... lays bare the realities of rural life in Oman’s highly traditional society ... Alharthi is highly attuned to the hardships of old age and is particularly adept at describing the stifling traditions of the Omani patriarchy ... Beyond the inherent interest of its context, Bitter Orange Tree will also strike a chord with those who have either voluntarily or involuntarily left their homeland and are torn between the longing for a new life and a yearning for the security of the old ways.
Alharthi’s narrative turns up many small, startling portals between decades, even generations, as a young woman a long way from home struggles to make sense of her journey from Lahore to London. Her discoveries sketch an extraordinary image over the last century and more. They are deeply intimate, though they stretch half the world, brimming everywhere with both agony and joy. By novel’s end, I daresay we’ve taken a more spectacular odyssey than Alharthi ventured on three years ago with her Booker winner Celestial Bodies ... complex and vivid ... Poetic as these meditations are, they never gloss over the jarring, often painful reality of the transition from a nomadic past to a jet-setter present. Bint Amir exemplifies many aspects of that changeover, though she’s never a cardboard stand-in ... gives us a number of these feminists before their time who manipulate the patriarchy to their own ends. Even when they fail, the struggle is fascinating ... An artist so profoundly engaged with women’s lives can’t help but recall Elena Ferrante, but this work has a greater serendipity; there’s never any telling where its magic apertures might whisk you next.
Aided by Booth’s deft touch, some parts affirm the author’s talent for lyrical shifts between past and present, memory and folklore, oneiric surrealism and grimy realism. Yet structural flaws and an overambitious global reach make for a patchy read ... the distance between author and narrator dissolves, and with it, the tension in the plot ... At times, the narrator’s projected emotions risk obscuring their object ... like several other episodes in this uneven novel, Sumayya’s numb revenge at an Omani beauty spot appears to be a fine short story poorly integrated into the whole.
The story transitions skilfully between narrative strands and time periods and in Marilyn Booth’s graceful translation is never cluttered or confused ... the novel foregrounds female characters and their plight while observing a degree of democratic restraint across the storylines: there are no heroines or divas here; the characters are not competing for the reader’s attention ... This is a beautifully-realised novel about unfulfillment, told with a sober, melancholy intelligence. I admired Celestial Bodies very much but perhaps this is even better.
Tender, gentle, and melancholic, Jokha Alharthi’s Narinjah: The Bitter Orange Tree is a testament to the ways in which the lives of young women are dictated by generations before them ... Alharthi’s prose is expansive as Zohour moves through her dreaming world, each emotion tied to a sensation that reiterates the liminality of Zohours experience ... While likely meant to mimic the immersive, dreamy reality Zohour experiences, Alharthi’s work sometimes feels haphazard. Paragraphs of description of the cool sand in Oman, or the solace of the shade of the bitter orange tree are followed by short, unexpected sentences that turn the story in a whole new direction, almost completely shattering the sleepy dreamscape. This jolt, though sometimes jarring, also acts as a method to weave the story between Bint Aamir’s unfulfilled wishes to Zohour’s ongoing life, expansive, and full of possibility ... A touching read for immigrants living away from their homelands, or folks rekindling family ties, Narinjah is recommended for those looking to explore the ways in which ancestry impacts our lives, even today.
Rorgeously rendered by Oxford professor Booth ... Alharthi again showcases a puzzle-like narrative that eschews linearity, overlaps stories, and requires attentive commitment ... In probing history, challenging social status, questioning familial bonds and debts, Alharthi’s multilayered pages beautifully, achingly unveil the haunting aloneness of women’s experiences.
Alharthi is an important new voice in world literature, and while Zuhour remains underdeveloped as a character, the novel is worth reading for the insights into Omani culture, particularly with regard to its exploration of family bonds and obligations, specifically women’s plight in those dynamics.
In the course of this probe into the labyrinth of the human mind and memories, it blurs the lines between longing and belonging in cadenced, lyrical, and poignant prose ... In crisp, short, individually-titled chapters, the narrative moves fast, but not always forward ... Marilyn Booth’s translations of both Celestial Bodies and Bitter Orange Tree offer a seamless reading experience. The bitter-sweet taste of the narrative gets effectively filtered through Booth’s prose and conveys a strong sense of melancholy to the readers.
Gorgeous and insightful ... The bittersweet narrative, intuitively translated by Booth, is chock-full of indelible images symbolizing freedom struck down, such as a battered kite and a bird ripped to shreds. This solidifies Alharthi’s well-earned literary reputation.
Alharthi...uses a dreamlike, nonlinear structure to show how the complications faced by a young Omani woman studying abroad merge with her remorse-filled memories of her very traditional surrogate grandmother ... Nostalgia and longing conveyed through abstract metaphors and interior dialogue.
