My partner and I are pretty good about getting rid of books when we are done with them. We don't have stacks and stacks of books sitting around that we're never going to read or that we read once and know we won't read again. The books we have are books we have yet to read, as well as books we love and have loved for years and can't bear to part with.
I, the Divine by Rabih Alameddine is one of the latter.
A bookstore friend of mine recommended this book to me years ago and I devoured it.
In I, the Divine, the main character, Sarah Nour El-Din (named after the "divine" Sarah Bernhardt), is writing her story. Each chapter is written in a different style. One chapter starts with her first memory. One chapter is written as though someone else wrote her biography. Another chapter starts with her as a teenager. Some of the chapters are in first person, others in third person. There are letters. The beginning of a novel. One chapter is written completely in French.
Through the gathering of these brilliant, aborted first chapters, we get a stunning sense of Sarah, living through her parents' divorce, living in Beirut in wartime, dealing with a family suicide, and through it all, Sarah's personality comes through. It is so brilliantly done.
The other day I got an email about newly released books, and one of them is a new book by Rabih Alameddine. And he has others! How can I not have known that he wrote more books? I feel remiss and a little silly that I never explored whether or not Alameddine had any other books, which is what I usually do when I find a book I love.
But now I know. And I want to read them.
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That is one book I absolutely regret having loaned out...as it was never returned.
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