Eight Months on Ghazzah Street – Hilary Mantel (1988)

There’s been another bit of a hiatus here, I am suddenly really struggling to get anything done on the blog at all. However, I did want to try and tell you about a recent book group read. 

My now totally virtual book group (international members joined during COVID) chose to read Hilary Mantel’s early novel Eight Months on Ghazzah Street in April. It was an interesting read – and I also found the reactions of the group interesting when we met to discuss it. Full disclosure – it was my suggestion, I had had the book for ages, languishing on the tbr. Following the death of Hilary Mantel it was suggested by someone in the group that we read something from her back catalogue. So, this was already a book I wanted to read, so I approached it already thinking it was a book I would enjoy. I did, for many reasons.

This is a novel about life in Saudi Arabia – life primarily for an expat – though we are given glimpses of what life might be like for Saudi’s too. The novel centres around Frances Shore, a young woman of around thirty. She and her husband Andrew have been living and working in Africa since they met but now Andrew’s work is bringing them to Saudi Arabia. Frances is an intelligent, capable woman with her own career – a cartographer – however in Saudi Arabia all that will be pushed to one side – she won’t even be able to drive.  

The couple settle down to life in an apartment on the titular Ghazzah Street – a building with numerous gates and locks which must be locked and unlocked on entry and exit for the safety and security of all. Not allowed to work, this flat is pretty much the whole of Frances’s world – she is able to go out shopping occasionally, usually in the company of another expat wife – or visit an expat at their home nearby, but the block of flats becomes Frances’ world. 

Frances soon meets two neighbours from her apartment building. Yasmin and her husband, their young baby and a servant occupy one flat, they are originally from Pakistan. Upstairs, lives Samira and her husband, young child and servant – they are Saudi. The fourth flat is empty. As Frances gets to know her neighbours, particularly Yasmin who she sees more of initially, she also comes to wonder about that fourth flat – as she hears whispers and footsteps coming from there – and a shrouded figure disappearing upstairs. She becomes fixated on a secret that she is sure is connected to that flat. Rumours among the expat community about someone using it as a meeting place for an affair – don’t entirely satisfy her.  As her world narrows, Frances spending time learning about Islam from the Quran, writing her diary, cooking, and speaking to her neighbours, Frances’s sense of unease only grows. 

“Life is not like detective stories. There is a wider scope for interpretation. The answers to all the questions that beset you are not in facts, which are the greatest illusion of all, but in your own heart, in your own habits, in your limitations, in your fear.”

Frances and Andrew spend time with other expats connected to the company Andrew works for, they are a pretty horrible bunch. None of them really want to be where they are – but have become trapped by the lure of good money, which for those with children back at home in boarding school becomes harder to turn down. 

“They always say, we’ll just do another year. It’s called the golden handcuffs.”

Determined to leave the apartment under her own steam (the Shores don’t have their own driver) she quickly finds the streets are not a pleasant place for an unaccompanied woman. Just walking a short distance to the home of one of the other wives, Frances encounters aggressive leers and cat calls from cars that pass her. Rumours circulate throughout the expat community of the terrible things that have befallen other Western women who have gone out inappropriately dressed or been found in the company of a man they weren’t married to.

Mantel’s portrait of expat life in Saudi Arabia in the mid 1980s is not a positive one – and the characters are all unlikeable, however I still found a lot to like in this novel. What Mantel does well is to replicate Frances’ sense of unease, I don’t think the reader ever quite relaxes – the society is not one many of us in the west would want to live in. That glimpse of Saudi life I found fascinating, and the expats don’t come out well either – most of them are racist – hard drinking and thoroughly unpleasant.  

All this is perhaps why several members of my book group weren’t very keen on the book.  At least one other member felt as I did, fascinated by the novel, appreciative of the good writing but disliked the characters (I think we were supposed to). Some members felt uncomfortable by the negative view of the country – whereas I felt it was probably realistic, Mantel had spent some time living there herself. Also, with characters so unlikeable, expressing vile views, some readers in the group just became disengaged by them – which I can understand, but I don’t usually have a problem with unlikeable characters. 

All in all, I enjoyed this novel, and it provided an interesting one for our group to discuss. I can see why it is a novel which might divide opinion.