Customer Reviews

Wedding Song

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I have read several of Mahfouz's books, and in my opinion, this is NOT one of his best. I do not enjoy stream-of-consciousness writing. We read this book in our bookclub, and several of us found his writing style very confusing, necessitating continual re-reading to find out who is talking, and about whom, and to whom. Nevertheless, the book is full of psychological implications, as it is four character's viewpoints about the same people and incidents. This is Mahfouz at his worst, and most confusing. If you want to read Mahfouz at his BEST, read instead The Cairo Trilogy. The first book in that trilogy is one of the best books I have ever read, and that one is not written in the stream-of-consciousness style.

One expects nothing less than brilliance from Mahfouz. And this novel of Middle Eastern values and traditions is another one of Mahfouz's masterpieces. There are great metaphors between the characters' lives on and off their theatrical stage. Definitely recommended!

While I agree with one reviewer's statement that Wedding Song by Naguib Mahfouz is confusing to read, I also think it's fair to say that as the four characters' stories are told, the story gets easier to follow. The most confusing by far is the first one, but ultimately that makes sense when you finish the book. The same story is told four times by four different characters with four different perspectives. The most confusing is from the character that's furthest removed from the truth of what happened. Then the father tells his story (who, by the way, is an opium addict -- that should explain something why it's confusing to follow him a bit), then the mother, and finally the son, who knows the full truth. The son's story is the most interesting because up until that point you'll only be reading perceptions.

I think Wedding Song is a nice experiment by a great author and shouldn't be over-looked. It may not be for everyone, but it's certainly worth the time. It's a quick read as well.

Even translated, Mahfouz's language in this book as well as his others is both beautiful and enchanting. He grips us with the consistency of his characters, if only in their inconsistency, and with the dramatic unfolding of an unfortunate moralist clinging to survival in his corrupt world. Abbas, the protagonist, is thrown from one extreme to another from the eyes of a blighted lover, to a opium-addicted father unable to decipher reality, and through his guilt-stricken mother trying to keep her family alive. In the end, we are left to decipher what is truth and whose reality it most resembles.
In a world where love is hard to find, a love story, a wedding song, emerges. Its beauty is wrapped within the hatred and cruel words of Abbas's father--its "naked self...revealed without hypocrisy."
This is a tale without devils or an angels, despite Halima's constant wisdom to her son. Mahfouz gives us a beautiful yet brutally honest view of the inner wokings of an Egyptian, or any, family, complete with misunderstanding, hatred, confliction, and love.

The Foreword gives the background of the title--the processions, songs, and dances that made up the weddings of the khedives (former Egyptian rulers). So, the WEDDING SONGS must be the narrations of the chapters by Tariq Ramadan the Actor, Karam Younis the prompter, Halima al-Kabsh the mother, and Abbas Karam Younis, whose playscript and life are the narrators' subject. His physical absence is talked of by theatrical colleagues who wonder whether he will show up for the play's first performance. Abbas then narrates, filling in the past and revealing feelings about what has happened, so the reader thinks he has caught up with the Abbas's real life--what is going on with him and how passion and surprises separate practical life from creative imagination, the wellspring for writing. The reader might yet wonder whether Abbas is confusing his life with the characters' lives. After the play is a success, Abbas experiences ennui over the spiritual and material resources to start a second. The non-resolution hints at the philosophy of Lao-tzu's "Tao te Ching" when Abbas awakens to the spiritual joy of the unexplainable: "Let its strength remain unfathomably in its mystery! Lo, its life-giving force marches forward, bearing with it the fragrance of triumph!"