40 of 44 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
What Marrakech is she talking about here?, October 9, 2008
I'm an American who has lived in Marrakech for nearly 30 years and after reading this book, I'm wondering what Marrakech the author is talking about? She passes off a mish-mash of foods, traditions, names and clothing from other parts of the Islamic world that have nothing to do with Morocco. There are so many factual errors--there's no Moroccan dish called poulet au poivres rouges no raisins in a pigeon pastilla, and no goats in the trees on the Casablanca road, to name a few--that I couldn't help wondering if the author was going to set her spy story in Marrakech, why on earth didn't she take the trouble to get the details right? There are also so many inaccuracies in her descriptions of the relations between Muslims and Christians that it would seem to add even more fuel to the fire of misunderstandings that already exist between us and the Islamic world. If you want to get an authentic look at life in Marrakech as seen by a Western woman, read another book: "Zohra's Ladder & other Moroccan Tales."
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18 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
A bland, ignorant book, October 18, 2008
There are no redeeming aspects of this book. The character development is laughable (all Lulu's relationships seem forced and unrealistic; for that matter, Lulu herself is someone you wouldn't want to get stuck next to at a dinner party). Her so-called observations are ignorant and predictable ( every Arab man she comes across is a terrorist or a coward, and every woman is weak and abused). Her portrayals of life in Marrakesh do not even attempt to conjure up the sights, sounds, and smells of the city or its inhabitants. The author made no attempt to research the culture. The plot is flat and almost laughable. Don't bother with this book.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A thoughtful look at why West & Middle East utterly fail to comprehend each other, July 14, 2009
A lot of Johnson's readers seem to have expected Lulu in Marrakech to be just like La Divorce. How can it be, when French and English speakers' misunderstandings are so tempered by our cultural similarities and long joint history of Western thought?
Johnson (like Lulu) clearly does not understand Morocco as well as she does Paris. How can she when the cultural setting doesn't allow her to meet any Moroccan women except as objects of charitable efforts? How can average Moroccan women understand us, if they are forbidden to either read or attend social functions with Westerners?
And how can Islamic conservatives join a dialogue with us when, as Lulu notes, they clearly cannot say out loud what they think: that our women look and act like whores (by their standards), that we can't meet in groups without the aid of alcohol, and that Westerners who travel to the Middle East don't even seem to honor their own religion, never mind respecting people whose religious principles direct every part of their life?
Johnson plays Lulu's inability to access Moroccan culture against a myriad of perspectives presented both by the other characters and by her chapterhead quotes from seemingly everyone on earth: from the Koran through Edith Wharton, Joseph Conrad and William E. Colby to someone named Orhan Pamuk, whom Johnson quotes saying,
"And now you've aired all your smug Western views, probably even having a few laughs deep down at our expense . . . but by inflicting your own naive ideas on us, by rhapsodizing about the Western pursuit of happiness and justice, you've clouded our thinking."
We've clouded our own thinking as well -- just think of America's recent accomplishments in the areas of happiness and justice. And this is the magic of Lulu in Marrakech: every time the reader draws a conclusion about the collision of West and Middle East, the next chapter forces the reader to reexamine the issue from yet another perspective.
Any plot weaknesses in this book are more than made up for by the force of the intellectual and emotional challenge it raises: what can we do to even begin to understand a culture that is so terribly foreign to us that we don't even know what questions to ask it?
This is not France: France was easy.
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