Domestic novels, examinations of a family and its trials and tribulations, have a mirror's power. They capture the commonalities, the prejudices and grudges, the loves and friendships, and reflect them back at us, offering the observant onlooker an opportunity to see his family in a different light. Structurally and imaginatively, these novels lack the intellectual challenge of speculative fiction; instead, they rely on the strength of their characters to reveal the truths about life and love that have been woven into the world around us. In this, Ms. Aboulela has penned a success, for its the extent to which the Abuzeid clan comes alive in her vision of 1950s Sudan that gives Lyrics Alley its punch.
In British-occupied Sudan, a country marked by vast inequities in income and opportunity, Mahmoud, the head of the affluent Abuzeid clan has everything he could want. Professionally, his thirst for respectability in the minds of the British has driven him to learn English, form wise business relationships with his country's Western overlords, and to begin to realize a vision of a modernized Sudan. Meanwhile, personally, Mahmoud, has four healthy children from two healthy wives. Nur and Nassir are his eldest, sons from his Sudanese wife, young adults who are set to inherit both their father's business and his vision. Farouk and Ferial are his youngest, the issue of his second, Egyptian wife, children of too few years to hold more than the hope of future success. But for all of Mahmoud's notable achievements, he cannot protect his family from the tragedy about to befall it. Nor can his formidable will keep fate's blow from opening up devastating fissures in its midst, turning wife against wife and son against son in a battle which will have consequences for more than just the Abuzeids.
Though Lyrics Alley is hobbled by an overburdened first act, marked by a plot yet to take off and by a host of characters yet to individuate, the final two-thirds of Ms. Aboulela's sweaty novel, its tragic politics, its stricken fathers, its beleaguered women, fill it up with a dark vitality. Many of its characters take their turns narrating their histories, but Nur, the most promising of Mahmoud's sons, steals the show. His longing to give up in the face of tragedy, to surrender to a world too ignorant to accept him, is as realistic as his bouts of poetic output are beautiful. Nur is the sun around which the story's characters orbit, his fight defining their lives, their actions, their emotions. But as much as Nur transforms the piece, the plight of his tutor, Ustaz, is our teacher. It's through his working-class struggles that we come to understand the poverty of the Arab world: its disrespect for education and enlightenment, its obsession with religion, and the cost it has paid as a result of meddlesome, Western colonialism.
This is a novel lit by poetry and shadowed by pettiness and cruelty. It is the story of a family and a nation in the midst of the most transformative century in human history. It is an examination of how one event, one moment in time, can rewrite the destinies of dozens of people. Ms. Aboulela has a keen eye for life's tiny but telling details and it is this, coupled with her compelling portrait of life during a difficult time, that turn Lyrics Alley from a slog into a delight. (4/5 Stars)
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