As young girls from the upper-class Rasheed family in Cairo, Jasmine and Camelia are carefully schooled in Egyptian ritual by their enigmatic grandmother. As they mature and break away from strict Muslim custom, they are catapulted in unorthodox directions. To the family's horror, Camelia becomes an exotic dancer. At the age of 16, Jasmine is married off to her cousin, who abuses her physically and psychologically. When he divorces her after a rape scandal, Jasmine is banished and forced to leave her children behind. She pursues her dream of becoming a doctor and only returns to Cairo when mysteriously summoned by her grandmother. Author of The Dreaming (Random, 1991) and Green City in the Sun (Fawcett, 1989), Wood has once again written a too-long novel with a large cast of characters. Recommended for fans of Wood and readers who love protracted tales. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 2/1/93.-- Mary Ellen Elsbernd, Northern Kentucky Univ. Lib., Highland Heights
Nearly five crisis-packed decades in the lives of traditionally reared Egyptian womencomplete with all the makings of a possible bestseller: a smooth-as-silk narration, a graceful approximation of the ritual concerns and courtesies of another culture, a few fightin' female hearts within the bonds of womanly repression, and the inevitable scandals, secrets, and forbidden loves within an upper-caste Cairo household. Heading the women's household of Dr. Ibraham Rasheed is his stately mother, Amira, whose firm upholding of the old ways of complete female subservience has had something to do with her pastan early trauma not revealed until the close. In 1945, when the story begins, Ibraham, distraught at the death of his young wife in childbirth, curses Godbut even more terrible is not being able to satisfy his dead father by siring a son. Ibraham adopts a baby boy, but fathers only daughtersamong them his favorites, Yasmina, by his blond English wife Alice, and Camelia by his first wife. Meantime, Ibraham is personal physician to King Farouk, forced to abdicate in 1952, and is jailed for treason, while Amira raises and presides over her women, arranging marriages and comforting; eventually, it is she who not only obtains Ibraham's release but exposes a family enemy. Along the way, Yasmina, in a brutal and loveless marriage, is banished becausein a heroic effort to save the familyshe is raped and thereby "dishonors" that family; and Camelia, sterile because of a face-saving operation, studies dancing with the famous Dahiba (another banished victim of "honor"). Yasmina travels to California, becomes a doctor, marries, divorces, and finds true love, whileat home there's a cholera epidemic, tragic and violent deaths, sad and happy pairings, and a few valiant stirrings of the female wish for liberation. A warmly gossipy family tale in an exotic settingand, like most of Wood's novels (The Dreaming, 1991, etc.), spun off with ease and apparent pleasure in the telling. (First printing of 100,000)