Merry Xmas all! Will be back with more reviews in the New Year!
Merry Xmas all! Will be back with more reviews in the New Year!
Member since:03.02.2004
Reviews:36
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Sandpiper is a collection of seven short stories by Ahdaf Soueif, who also wrote 'The Map of Love' and 'In the Eye of the Sun'. If you haven't yet read any of her work, I would recommend starting with this one, purely because I'd read 'The Map of Love' and 'In the Eye of the Sun' before I'd read this book, and it did leave me feeling a little cheated and disappointed, mainly because I'd loved the other two novels so much and hadn't felt so gripped with this one.
The protaganist in each story is a woman, but two of the short stories focus on the same protaganist, Asya. These two stories are told both in the first person, and, while I loved 'In the Eye of the Sun' and never wanted it to end, I was disappointed to find Asya, who is the main character in 'In the Eye of the Sun', narrating two episodes of her life in two short stories here. I felt that in some way it was cheap, and that the author was benefiting twice from the same character. Also, as I'd already read the other novel, while these two stories were not directly part of it, I knew Asya's story and didn't need to know these two episodes. I'd read the novel as a complete whole and was now reading about her again, after the fact. Perhaps the author wrote the short stories first and then developed Asya further, which produced 'In the Eye of the Sun'. I daresay had I read the short stories first I either wouldn't have noticed it or thought it pretty cool, but unfortunately I didn't!
The other five stories in the collection are told either by themselves or narrated in the third person. Each woman is different and is in a completely different situation: there is the woman in the first story who tells of a time in the past when she lived in a compound with her family and what happened there, or there is the woman in another story who runs a restaurant with her elderly father, who never married.
The stories don't have a particular ending, but instead leave the reader with a feeling of continuity. Rather than being a set story they are episodes that take place in each woman's life and how they deal with that particular situation: the reader is like a friend who has been invited into the confidence of another.
Compared with Soueif's other novels, this collection is relatively short. It's published by Bloomsbury, and the retail price is £6.99. Considering that there's only 256 pages to this novel, this is quite bad value: it's not a lot of book for your money. I read this book within two or three evenings, so I didn't get a lot of entertainment for my money, although I did enjoy the stories. However, I must admit that they are easy to read (and I'm a bit of a speed reader) and a good introduction to an author whose future works I am definitely looking forward to reading.
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