Rent In the Country of Men

A compelling fiction/memoir of a summer in Libya in 1979 from the perspective of a nineyearold boy named Suleiman. It is a fascinating look at the boys rather twisted Freudian relationship with his mother. Suleiman is the result of a marital rape of the arranged marriage of his fourteenyearold mother, making his mother ambivalent, both deeply loving and deeply resentful of her child. Her drunken rants on the injustices inflicted upon her by the men in her life scar the boy. While usually mentioned only in passing in most reviews that Ive read in published sources, this is the conflict that opens and closes the story. The middle of the novel is filled with politics and fear. Suleimans father is a dissident. He gets arrested and tortured before being returned to his family. Certainly these other events are of interest to the narrative, but they are more emotionally distant for the reader, since Suleimans relationship with his father is distant. It is during this part of the story that the young protagonist becomes much less sympathetic. Influenced by the darkness and lies around him, he becomes a monster who betrays his father, betrays friends, and nearly drowns a homeless man. He appears to be pathological, lacking sympathy for anyone.The novel wraps up oddly. It seems to have been difficult for the author to know how many ends to tie up and how quickly or slowly to tie them. He is sent to Egypt and becomes a pharmacist, living with a family friend. But a feeling of healing never comes. As an expatriate in Egypt, he is blamed by others and racked with guilt for not suffering with his family and friends in dictatortormented Libya.Worth reading? Certainly. But dont expect to enjoy it at an emotional level. It remains unsatisfying with its emotional distance from the characters and its pathological protagonist. A word about the audiobook: What makes all authors think they are the best ones to read their books? Reading well is a skill, like writing is a skill. Speaking doesnt make everyone a reader any more than writing an email makes everyone an author. The authors reading is capable enough, but lacking in emotion and fairly dull and flavorless. Not the worse Ive heard, but certainly not the best.