Reviews for From a Crooked Rib

The average rating for From a Crooked Rib based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2013-07-29 00:00:00 Rolando Lopez Farah takes the perspective of Ebla, a nineteen-year old Somali girl from a rural area who has no education, and whose reflections on freedom and society form the incendiary core of the book. Most of them arise from her experience at the hands of men to whom she is a chattel. I found this to be a movingly simple and unaffected account from the perspective of a woman of few words and many insights. At times, she seems almost to become a cipher for the subjugation of women in Somalia; Farah does not cast her as a rebel heroine flying well-formed ideological flags. In fact, I now realise that my desire for her to rebel and demand her rights is an orientalist desire informed by stereotypes. Ebla's reality is not the reality my still colonised mind imagines for her. Yet Farah condemns the injustice she suffers effectively in the revelation of each prosaic detail in her life. He makes her as alive to us as we are to ourselves.

Review # 2 was written on 2017-02-26 00:00:00 F Schouten Moving, insightful, and quick - I'm happy that I read this and learned about a culture I didn't know much about, but I can't say that I particularly enjoyed the experience. It has (as other reviewers have pointed out) many of the flaws of the first novel, one written in just three weeks: time moves oddly; the occasional perspective shifts are jarring; an overreliance on dreams; the accumulation of plot begins to overwhelm the writer, as evidenced by the book changing style as it goes - big scenes at the beginning with lots of detail, but a rush at the end, involving a coincidence (a bad one) to get Farah out of a polygamy subplot that he never seemed interested in. I really enjoyed the first 30 pages of this, and Farah's gifts, which have lead to a great career, are apparent - his inhabitation of the perspective of an 18 year old girl is notable and a happy surprise. And she is a great character, one I cared about. But beyond the quirks in the writing of this debut, books about curses tend to feel flat if the curse is introduced in the beginning. It's a bit like a movie preview that gives away too much: you still watch, but you're waiting to get past what you already sort of know.