طيور أيلول

I had forgotten that Arabic fiction always follows the rule of “Anything that can go wrong will go wrong”. It's weird how a light read can be so fatalistic.
About the book, I enjoyed it, though not the style of books I would usually go for (found it overly poetic at times, and got lost in the stream of consciousness descriptions), but a very important document about the state of women in Lebanese villages around that time (early 60s), the state of limbo they are held in, without education or future prospects, other than being married off to the first comer. Even the narrator's escape of the system, only found her in another prison, alienated in the city, a stranger to everyone, even her own family.

My problem with this book however, is the lack of a main story. We follow the many women and men surrounding Mona (the narrator), their hardships and their woes, but Mona is just there describing everything around her, feeling alienated by her peers, but nothing else happening to her, until the last chapter. It doesn't take away from the book, but that lack of main story, didn't allow me to dive into the book, the way I would've loved to.