Yalo (Rainmaker Translations)

it's ok.

I cannot believe I am still reading this book! (Nearly a month later).It churns and churns, repeating itself endlessly, maybe adding a little more detail with each telling.And the torture, I hate reading about torture; maybe I have my head in the sand but it distresses me that people can be so cruel to each other.Mind you, the main character isn't much better, he may be a product of the Lebanese Civil War, but he's a nasty piece of work too - a rapist who doesn't even realise that what he's doing is rape.What I'm finding truly fascinating is that, by chance, I have two different translations and I keep swapping between the two. Humphrey Davis's version is very much more poetic, it has more of an Arabic feel to it, while Peter Theroux seems to write for a more Western audience, less flowery but sometimes too direct. I'd struggle to say which version I prefer and I'm definitely spending too much time comparing them.Just under 100 pages to go and I guess I'm going to struggle through to the end now. The book group has been and gone, so I'm just doing this for myself(?!). I need to know how Yalo will end up, though I can't say I really care if he meets a grisly end.......16th December and I finally finished. It didn't get any better, although someone from the book group promised me it would. If Elias Khoury's intention was to highlight the fate of the lost children of a generation, then I'm sure he would have benefited from taking the chance to spend more time with his characters actually on the streets. It seems to me that this endless repetition of Yalo's story just wastes the opportunity of having someone concentrate on your book.I'm assured that Khoury's book 'Gate of the Sun' is a wonderful read, but I think it'll be a while before I come back for more of this.2 starts just because I finished.

Yalo was sold to me as a horror novel, something a local bookseller said was in the vein of Peter Straub. It couldn't be farther from traditional horror. Instead, it's a rambling, incoherent mess of metaphors and incredibly difficult narrative that is tough to follow and obtuse. I couldn't empathize with the main character and his plight because the development just wasn't there. 15 pages into the book, one of the sentences is, "When he told her that he loved her from his spinal column...she laughed so hard that tears ran down her face, and she kept having to blow her nose." Maybe the translation leaves something to be desired, but the ornate sentences and intense psychological descriptions of what Yalo's going through bored me. The writer uses three or four sentences full of metaphors to describe an action or feeling, resulting in long paragraphs. The worst part is I became bored very quickly and gave up 25 pages into the book.

A story from Beirut’s civil war, more-or-less on-going since the 1980’s. The book focuses on one young man who represents the diversity of the country: he’s of Arab ancestry but a Maronite Christian whose grandfather was a Kurd. He fights in one of the wars, migrates to Paris and then returns and gets a job as a night watchman over a large estate. The estate includes a lover’s lane where he robs men and rapes women who visit the isolated area. Eventually arrested and tortured, he is forced to repeatedly write his confession to his real crimes and other ones the authorities want to pin on him. During his torture he becomes a writer and seems to be becoming schizophrenic, elaborating on, and eventually inventing a past even more complex than his real past. Like the author’s book, White Masks, this is a tale of the tragic toll of war upon humanity and how past atrocities breed future ones: the grandfather’s eccentricities that shaped this youth’s upbringing can be traced back to his grandfather being an orphan from massacres almost a century ago. And so it goes.

This book is set in Beirut during the war. Or rather, one of the recent wars. So I guess I shouldn't have been surprised at the insanity of the (unreliable) narrator. However, I just couldn't stomach the torture scenes. They disturbed me so much that I had to stop reading. Even such an interesting setting, and excellent literary skills, doesn't trump nightmares. Plus, it made me wonder if some sicko would read this book, and get new ideas for torture. A chilling thought. Note: Peter Theroux is brilliant as a translator, as always. Love that guy...

Khoury's character, Yalo/Daniel in the novel Yalo is reminiscent of the young man, Meursault, in Camus' The Stranger. Is what Yalo telling us reality or his reality? What's real and what isn't? Yalo does not begin as a "crazed person" as described by one reviewer. He, like Meursault, is isolated and spiritually lost. A second reviewer claims Yalo is punished for crimes he had not committed "like planting bombs." Nowhere does Khoury state that Yalo committed this crime or did not commit this crime. Yalo's experience in the hands of his torturers/interrogators is terrifying - recall the horrors of Orwell's Room 101. His life story (before his descent into the world of rape, robbery, and bombs) is confusing and heartbreaking as are most people's lives. The novel Yalo is a challenge to read on many levels, but worth the effort.

This book was different than what I thought it would be. I assumed I would learn something about living in Lebanon but there was little of that here. This book was disconnected, disturbing, rambling, repetitive - but that was the point and that's what made it a memorable read. The lead character, Yalo, has been tortured and has lost control of his memory and logic. Since the book is a first person recantation of his life, it's hard to follow, makes little sense at times, contradicts itself, rambles all over the place, and certain things get repeated and repeated. But again, that's the point of the book. Not an easy read because of the point of view (basically a crazed person). I plan to check out the author's other books to see his style of writing because this one was so unusual.