Geraldine Brooks wrote a wonderful review about "The Jewel of Medina" by Sherry Brooks. I read it recently in the Washington Post Book World. The book itself sounds dreadful, but the review was a riot, and it reminded me of some of my daughter's reviews of books and television shows. The review starts out:
It's shocking that Random House got cold feet about Muslim reaction and refused to publish Sherry Jones's The Jewel of Medina. But what's even more shocking is that they paid good money to acquire such a dreadful novel in the first place.
And it ends up:
Not everyone has responded to this book negatively. Some respected Muslim feminists such as Irshad Manji and Asra Nomani have written in support of The Jewel of Medina. So perhaps the fairest thing is to let the book speak for itself. Aisha's crush, Safwan, is described as: "Tall, handsome Safwan, with the chiseled face of a purebred steed and hair as thick and glossy as a horse's mane." There are words that strike despair into the heart of a reader. "Steed" is one of them. "Loins" another: "Desire burned like a fire in Muhammad's loins, unquenchable in one night, or two, or three." On almost every page, similes jostle each other for room: "Terror snatched at my throat like the teeth of a crazed dog and hammered the city like a hailstorm." And words strain for meaning in sentences such as this: "Outside, a vulture's cry impaled my waning hopes."
Finally, there's the matter of Aisha's vital signs. Her pulse does some very odd things: "My pulse raced like that galloping horse I'd dreamt so often of riding on with him." "My pulse reared like a spooked horse." "I ignored the whirling of my pulse." "My pulse clipping my throat. . . ." "My pulse surged." "My pulse sped." "I willed my fluttering pulse to calm down." Someone clearly needs to find that girl a cardiologist. Given the other anachronisms in this book, I wouldn't have been surprised had one turned up.
My daughter will remember that I once stopped reading a novel about the childhood of King Arthur's Guinevere because the author kept referring to her as a "fosterling".
And there is that memorable sentence in one of the last "Clan of the Cave Bear" books that says, "Jondalar awoke with a desire to make some tools". I seem to remember some "loins" and "steeds" in those books, too. By her second book, Jean Auel was sadly in need of an editor.
