Palestinian author Shibli’s poetic yet precise language and nimble characterizations partially make up for a sludge of undifferentiated melancholy in this series of interrelated vignettes set in her native land. In the course of her work, an increasingly isolated woman writes letters to a man she’s never met that go from professional to personal; “I wanted to offer him the essence of my existence,” she says. Intimate correspondence also informs “The First Measure,” the teenager Afaf, who leaves school to work in the post office for her father, reading, and sometimes altering people’s letters (changing “Palestine” to “Israel” among other edits). A married woman falls in love with the physiotherapist she visits for treatment and finds her new feelings overwhelming her conservative life. A woman’s devotion to physical fitness fails to ameliorate her increasing horror and disgust with the world around her. A shy man who has failed in his university studies and works in a supermarket looks longingly at a woman on a public bench and thinks of the few women he has known. Shibli (Touch) writes beautifully piece to piece, but fails to achieve much of a cumulative effect; readers will do better to dip in and out of this collection rather than consume it whole. Agent: The Susijn Agency Ltd. (Jan.)
"This novella is a challenging read; not because of Ms. Shibli's sparing style of writing, which is strikingly different from the traditional Arabic style and quite riveting, but because of the intensely difficult insight it gives on the minutiae of the lives' of others... We Are All Equally Far from Love is not a book to be picked up and put down... [it] demands to be read"
"This novella is a challenging read; not because of Ms. Shibli's sparing style of writing, which is strikingly different from the traditional Arabic style and quite riveting, but because of the intensely difficult insight it gives on the minutiae of the lives' of others... We Are All Equally Far from Love is not a book to be picked up and put down... [it] demands to be read"
New York Journal of Books
"Adania Shibli's second book We Are All Equally Far From Love confirms her as a rare, challenging talent. It is neither an easy nor always a pleasant read, but it is an extraordinary piece of writing which weaves together melancholia, beauty, violence and brutish physicality in an extended meditation on love and loneliness"with its deft handling of beauty and humor alongside pain and isolation, its multi-colored tones and shifting moods, it becomes a dark, difficult, exhausting but ultimately cathartic exploration of the depths of the human psyche."
Shibli's newest book is less cryptic and decidedly more insistent, consisting of eight short stories whose plots initially seem linked but soon disconnect one from another- just as Shibli's lovelorn characters break up or fail to connecteach story is a variation on a theme, the burden of which is the difficulty of finding and sustaining love"[Shibli] has done well to remind us that sometimes when love falters, we need look no further for the reason why than the nearest mirror."
We Are All Equally Far From Lovewill confirm [Shibli's] reputation as a formally brilliant literary artist, whose stylistic innovations and bold feel for language affirm contemporary fiction's capacity to be reinvented anew... Sharply individualized and movingly convincing in their raw tenderness and candor, these varying perspectives are finely wrought to the level of poetry, yet retain the sense of issuing directly from the characters' anguished subjectivity."
In Shibli's well-received first novel, Touch, her impressionistic prose brings a sense of physical beauty to the drab surroundings of a young Palestinian girl. In her second novel, Shibli directs her talent at darker themes, and the occasional flashes of poetic imagery are the only sparks in scenes of otherwise oppressive ennui. This brief novella consists of six vignettes, linked by their despairing tone: a woman is stalked and threatened with rape by a former lover; trapped in a loveless marriage, another woman (or is it the same one? Shibli's minimalist style offers few clues) has romantic illusions about her physical therapist; a young woman wracked with the flu dwells on her hatred for her parents and siblings. Only one vignette clearly places the character in Palestine: a young woman works for her magistrate father in a post office, erasing the word Palestine from letters and replacing it with Israel. VERDICT Recommended for readers keeping up with modern Middle Eastern literature and this award-winning author.—Reba Leiding, James Madison Univ. Libs., Harrisonburg, VA
