Sweetness in the Belly by Camilla Gibb

I had a hard time putting this book down. On Saturday, I was trying not to read it too fast, so I would read a chapter, then look something historical up in Wikipedia and force myself to spend 10 minutes learning before going to the next chapter. It is the first book taking place in a foreign country that I've read in a while, and I loved that feeling of being transported.

This book is about a woman who (as a small child) is left by her British-born bohemian parents at a Sufi shrine in Morocco for a long weekend. They die that weekend, and she ends up converting to Islam and making a pilgrimage to Ethiopia as a young woman. The political unrest in Ethiopia sends her to London, and the bulk of the book alternates between these two locations and times in her life.

The book's main theme was identity. As a British-born woman in an Islamic society, Lilly did not fit in; nor did she fit in returning to London after that experience. She is a strong, independent woman, but as the book continues and the places where she finds comfort are threatened, she hardens on the outside. Lilly is a very likable character, but one who seems distant; I believe that distance is purposeful, not an indication of bad writing.

I learned a lot about Ethiopian history and culture, as well as Islam, neither of which I was expecting. For me, Ethiopia was always a country that (a) also used to comprise Eritrea, (b) spawned some good restaurants in the States where you ate without your hands, and (c) had a famine that prompted the original We Are the World or something. I am much better educated now, although I didn't find any of those things to be untrue.

If I have any criticism of this book, it's that in what I perceive to be an effort to describe Islam as having incarnations that are kind and joyful (not terrorist fodder), Gibb gets a little preachy and long-winded through Lilly. I think it's great that the literary community is trying to support a wider worldview of, among other things, Islam, and that's one of the reasons I love reading so much. But, a few of Lilly's comments about Islam were less about telling a story or developing a character and more about defending it to its critics.

That aside, there was some excellent writing in the book. At a social gathering, Lilly notices she is being spoken to in English, not the native language: "It's okay, I wanted to tell them, I even dream in Harari now. And Harari dreams are not like Arabic or English dreams: there are always a great many more people involved."

And Gibb makes some larger points through Lilly as well: "Once you step inside, history has to be rewritten to include you. A fiction develops, a story that weaves you into the social fabric, giving you roots and a local identity. You are assimilated, and in erasing your differences and making you one of their own, the community can maintain belief in its wholeness and purity. After two or three generations, nobody remembers the story is fiction. It has become fact. And this is how history is made."

Definitely recommended, this book will open your mind.