The sentences in The Country of Others are layered, and more laden with material; the writing is more exploratory, it reaches outward. And a complex world pushes back against her words, changing the quality of her attention to it ... Nothing feels in the least dutiful or cautious, however, in her creation of her fictional characters; she still works her dangerous magic and delivers shocks, imagining the violence of their desires and rages ... Slimani’s charged language, feeling for the fracture lines inside individuals and between them, and between different cultures, prepares us for the worst: which comes close, but never quite comes home.
The Country of Others is a very different beast [than Slimani's previous books], a broader and better book than either of its predecessors ... As in the earlier novels [the characters] twist between need and repulsion, lust and hatred. What’s new about this book is the sense of a world beyond those passions, one that’s been realized with sympathy and skill ... This novel is maybe a bit short on humour. But it does impress with the depth of its moral imagination. It’s what you might, if you were feeling provocative, call a novel for adults: one that doesn’t grind axes, or preach, or tally up right and wrong, but simply explains that to know all isn’t necessarily to forgive all ... The Country of Others is a morally difficult, slow-burn story about lives being suffocated by circumstance, one that’s carried off with greater sympathy and realism than anything Slimani has done before.
... lays bare women’s intimate, lacerating experience of war and its consequent trauma... In Sam Taylor’s seamless, poetic translation, Slimani masterfully captures these nuanced shifts: the French that scales back to Mathilde’s Alsatian dialect when she’s in the throes of delirious illness ... Slimani writes motherhood like no one else, and Mathilde’s subtle ambivalence toward that role is no exception ... Slimani handles Mathilde’s evolution elegantly: The wife is no victim.
Slimani shines through the rise and fall of tension in her novels. Her willowy prose is dense with emotional depth and insight, and blunt observations elucidate every scene with force ... Slimani wields tight control of conflict ... At times, these appeals to feminism feel overdone. The characters, who seem otherwise unable to navigate their positions in the world, are suspiciously articulate in their internal observations ... Although Slimani’s prose, translated from the French by Sam Taylor, is stunning, the narrative structure, strung together in vignettes, is at times hazy, obscuring chronology. The book’s strength lies in its ability to interweave these disparate pieces into a satisfying if infuriating look at how power works in the struggle for independence, both personal and political.
The book’s chief success is its depiction of the historical context, particularly the clash of Arab and European cultures ... Realistic details pepper the narrative ... Scenes begin randomly and finish abruptly. Characters come and go ... Structurally, the biggest problem is with time ... Nevertheless, there is much that entertains and informs ... Small moments bring history to life.
It is refreshing to hear such a confident, near-omniscient voice, and the evocative opening chapters promise great things. However, Slimani struggles with her large cast ... The current of a central narrative never quite sweeps us away ... The Country of Others contains plenty of precious cargo but the vessel is far from watertight; without the engine of a killer concept, Slimani’s writing flounders.
Mathilde’s story is happening against the backdrop of political turmoil and Slimani skillfully interweaves this with the narrative ... it is interesting to learn this period of history from the point of view of a woman torn between the French and Moroccan sides, for personal reasons ... The writing feels more subtle than in Slimani’s previous novels. The sentences are longer, more descriptive and less designed for instant impact. There is some repetition, which can feel a bit like Slimani is labouring the point ... Subplots keep pace and interest ... Slimani’s style, presenting her characters with all their faults, could make you hate them but actually seeing them in their complexity makes them human and the relationships she describes nuanced (especially Mathilde and Amine’s complicated marriage) ... the first in a planned trilogy, which is good news because when it finished I felt bereft, Mathilde’s voice lingering in my mind. It ends in 1955, when Moroccan independence is looming - and Aicha sees her world changing. This is a multi-layered, nuanced book, with moments of humour and a lot to empathise with. I look forward to the next instalment.
Her latest novel takes things more slowly. After all, Slimani has plenty of time— is the first in a trilogy ... The prose reaches beyond the saga’s domestic setting to illuminate questions of politics and power ... This is writing that uses a microscope to examine the cosmos and a telescope to survey a family meal. It is highly enjoyable, and dazzlingly fresh.
The book is certainly as wild and lush as a wildflower meadow, the characters and their backstories bursting with random aplomb from the grass. But just as there are a thousand ways to meander through a meadow, there’s no clear path through this multi-focused book either ... With such rich material, it’s a shame that Slimani’s research is sometimes worn heavily ... At other times, the writing is careless ... It’s hard not to feel that Slimani has relinquished her pinpoint writer’s eye and fallen fatally under the spell of this redolent but personal material. Incidents are included even though they seem to have no pay-off, while events with genuine narrative consequence are muscled out by the next anecdote.
... an unabashedly feminist novel of outsiders ... doesn’t wrap up its myriad messy conflicts, but it does conclude in an emotionally satisfying way while leaving the door open for its next two chapters.
Slimani’s deft lyricism is exquisitely rendered by Sam Taylor’s translation ... At times, however, the narrative, with its sparse dialogue, reads like a series of cameos and anecdotes, often ending in a mild anticlimax ... The Country of Others is at its strongest exploring the day-to-day consequences of the clash between cultures.
Ms Slimani’s novel thrums with nervous energy. Mathilde’s and Amine’s relationship as a mixed-race couple is minutely observed, as is their shared ambivalence towards the struggle for independence. Though her use of multiple viewpoints can be disorientating, Ms Slimani excels at evoking this time and place. Readers will end the first volume of the trilogy with high expectations for the next.
A novel that is written from life observed by the author is, I imagine, an accurate depiction of life for women in such countries. Mathilde is a wonderful centre character, brave and feisty with staying power, and her story makes good reading. The prose is so descriptive I can almost feel the scratch of the sand on my face. The first volume in a trilogy suggests there is more of Mathilde’s tale to be told and I look forward to reading how she progressed. It is an interesting and revealing book written with skill.
The lurid storylines of those earlier books lent them a page-turning urgency; here, by contrast, a marked lack of narrative thrust makes for a somewhat dull grind ... Slimani’s impassive prose style (translated here by Sam Taylor) can seem dreary, and she is conspicuously over-reliant on certain go-to words ... The turmoil of Morocco’s independence struggle is competently rendered ... One can’t quite shake the impression that many of these characters are stock types, each exemplifying a given demographic phenomenon or political tendency ... There is more to life than this, of course, but as a didactic snapshot — of a time and a place, a culture and its mores, a moment in history — The Country of Others is a qualified success.
The woolly narrative structure occasionally blurs the plot’s focus and saps it of drive, but Slimani’s visceral prose never fails to reel readers back in. An affecting tale of evolution and revolution.
