Eight Months on Ghazzah Street

By: Hilary Mantel

Narrated by: Sandra Duncan

When Frances Shore joins her engineer husband in Jeddah, she is warned not to ask questions. But bored, she begins to speculate about her neighbors and the empty flat above her. At first she believes the flat is being used as a lover's tryst - then she suspects something more sinister.

©1988 Hilary Mantel (P)2014 W.F. Howes

Perfect for listening

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

I knew Hilary Mantel from the Cromwell books (Wolf Hall may be the best writing I have ever read), so wanted to know more of her work. I recognize the autobiographical basis for this book, and found it very interesting -- well written, but the protagonist was so annoying in her naivete (real or pretended - couldn't tell) that she got on my nerves. But it was wonderful to have the audio version, because of the accents. I was even intrigued by the contrast between the protagonist's rather flat and un-nuanced descriptions of her surroundings and the (very stereotypical) people she meets and the delicate flavor and nuance that is supplied by the audio narrator's inflections. Don't think I would have liked this much if I read the print version, but enjoyed the audio very much.

How would you have changed the story to make it more enjoyable?

Stupid question -- one doesn't rewrite a good writer's work. I had trouble determining the point of view being expressed: is the protagonist that dumb, or just playing dumb? -- she was a cartographer, has traveled the world, and in this setting she just sits around like a lump? -- are we meant to be seeing a bovine anger at being in Saudi or a woman who is suffering from serious depression from some other cause?. If the ending had been different (the mysterious upstairs turns out to be just a place for illicit sexual trysts), that might have cast a different light on the protagonist's previous process of deduction. But as it stands, this setting just seems like a very interesting place observed by a not very insightful visitor. Maybe this is the standard 'unreliable narrator' scheme, but this narrator (in the book, not the audio reader) reminded me of what my mother used to say when I crossed the room in front of the TV she was watching: 'you make a better door than a window.'

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

No.

Amazingly Good!

No one writes like Mantel! This book makes you realize that all women "live in the kingdom" to some degree.

Abysmal

This author could have saved us all a lot of time by simply writing "I hate Saudi Arabia" instead of a whole book attempting to tear a country down while looking cringingly Eurocentric.

Horrid book

This has got to be the single worst book I have ever come across. The story was boring Andi kept waiting for there to be a plot and there never really was. Which was the only reason I finished it, just waiting.