I, The Divine: A Novel in First Chapters [Paperback]

Rabih Alameddine (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 2002

Named after the "divine" Sarah Bernhardt, red-haired Sarah Nour El-Din is "wonderful, irresistibly unique, funny, and amazing," raves Amy Tan. Determined to make of her life a work of art, she tries to tell her story, sometimes casting it as a memoir, sometimes a novel, always fascinatingly incomplete. 

"Alameddine's new novel unfolds like a secret... creating a tale...humorous and heartbreaking and always real" (Los Angeles Times). "[W]ith each new approach, [Sarah] sheds another layer of her pretension, revealing another truth about her humanity" (San Francisco Weekly). Raised in a hybrid family shaped by divorce and remarriage, and by Beirut in wartime, Sarah finds a fragile peace in self-imposed exile in the United States. Her extraordinary dignity is supported by a best friend, a grown-up son, occasional sensual pleasures, and her determination to tell her own story. "Like her narrative, [Sarah's] life is broken and fragmented. [But] the bright, strange, often startling pieces...are moving and memorable" (Boston Globe). Reading group guide included.

Editorial Reviews

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.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

Alameddine's new novel unfolds like a secret... creating a tale...humorous and heartbreaking and always real. -- Los Angeles Times

Inventive and wholly original...a fully realized portrait of a complex and fascinating woman. -- Seattle Post-Intelligencer

[M]oving and memorable. -- Boston Globe

[W]ith each new approach, [Sarah] sheds another layer of her pretension, revealing another truth about her humanity. -- San Francisco Weekly

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; First Edition edition (October 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393323560
• ISBN-13: 978-0393323566
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #768,925 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Expect the unexpected., July 28, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: I, the Divine: A Novel in First Chapters (Hardcover)

In our current literary era of quirky, edgy characters fashioned solely for the purpose of being quirky and edgy (e.g., those terribly inauthentic women in Ya Ya Sisterhood, any character of Kingsolver's, most of the women's books of recent years), Alameddine's Sarah is a sigh of relief. Her tales, each an attempt to start off her memoirs, add up to tell the story of a life unique and absolutely compelling that feels, somehow, completely new and comfortably familiar. She is delicious: haughty, clueless, touching, exasperating, deep, shallow, and outrageously funny. The chapter about her tenure as an AIDS support volunteer once again illuminates Alameddine's breathtaking gift for presenting horror with a humor that never makes fun, never downplays, and neither winks nor blinks. Not since A Confederacy of Dunces have we seen anything as delightful as Sarah. This is a book to read, re-read, and only lend to a friend if he gives you something of great value to hold as guarantee of return.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I cannot believe this is fiction!, August 30, 2004

By 

Nancy Y. Sadiq "Masria In NYC" (NYC) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: I, The Divine: A Novel in First Chapters (Paperback)

Just like Adonis noted, this novel is completely on point. The life that Sarah Nour El-Din shares with us is one that is rarely so succinctly shown in public, with such truth - especially since Arabs/Arab American's do not ever like to air their "dirty laundry".

It had me completely addicted - It was as if I was watching glimpses of my family and friends lives...and that I was Sarah.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Entrancing and Revolutionary!!, August 13, 2005

By 

Diala (Beirut, Lebanon) - See all my reviews

This review is from: I, The Divine: A Novel in First Chapters (Paperback)

I've just finished reading I, the Divine. I bought it only two days ago. it's indeed one of the subtlest and most engaging novels i've ever read, and the most innovative ever. The novel has anything but a chronological order and doesn't abide by one narrative technique; it uses as many as you can imagine..from stream of consciousness, to flash-backs, omniscient narrator here and first-person there. It's entirely written in first chapters where some stories resume pages after they started. Sometimes the same story is re-told in a different style- or language!- the moment you think your mind had shifted far from it. At one point, you get the impression that you're reading more than one novel by different authors!
The characters are intricately sketched, through different points of view. The dialogues are cleverly made, suggestive and most importantly genuine and true. A Lebanese myself, I couldn't but identify with all the Lebanese characters in the story. Amazing!
Rabih Alameddine, we're proud of you.