The Sun at Midday: Tales of a Mediterranean Family

by Gini Alhadeff

For Gini Alhadeff, there was rarely a difference between feeling at home and feeling foreign. Born to an Italian family in Alexandria, Egypt, she lived in places as far-flung as Cairo, Khartoum, Florence, and Tokyo; raised Catholic, she did not learn of her Sephardic Jewish roots until she was living in New York in her twenties. In The Sun at Midday , Alhadeff traces her unusual ancestral history, seeking the source of her chameleon-like skills of adaptation. Through the reminiscences of family members—among them cousin Pierre, a worldly priest and celebrity confessor who recalls the sumptuous lives of Alexandrian ex-pats, and her uncle Nissim, now a gynecologist in Queens, who survived the horrors of the Holocaust—she unearths a wealth of rich and strange stories. Woven together with exhilarating prose, they form an uncommonly affecting memoir of a family whose past defies summation, and of Alhadeff’s own life both in it and apart from it.

Genres: Nonfiction, Memoir, Middle East, Jewish

240 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1997

Reviews

[HeavyReader · Rating 1 out of 5]

I did not enjoy reading this book.

The blurb on the back of the dust jacket by Iris Murdoch calls The Sun at Midday "A delightful story of a family." I not find anything delightful in this story. I found this story depressing. My blurb on the back of the book would read, "A depressing story of a family."

The author's ancestors were rich people with servants. I always have difficulties feeling the proper attachment to those sorts of people when I read about them. Honestly, I'd usually rather read about the servants.

The author's father was an asshole to the author's mother for nearly half a century. Still, the mother was sad when the father left her for a younger woman.

Then, right in the middle of the book, an uncle (cousin?) tells (in his own words) his story of being held in Nazi concentration camps. He relates his experiences in brutal detail, not something I was expecting to find in a book called "delightful."

Did Iris Murdoch and I read the same book? "Delightful"? Really? In my mind, a picnic is delightful. This book was no picnic.

Also on the back cover, Wendy Wasserstein calls this book "funny." Ms. Wasserstein and I must have totally different senses of humor, because I didn't giggle once while reading this book. I can't recall being the least bit amused while reading this book.

Maybe Alhadeff's descriptions of family members were supposed to be funny. To me, her descriptions simply came across as mean.

If I were going to write a blurb for the back of this book, I'd say, "A depressing story about a family of mostly mean people, told by a relative who doesn't seem to like any of them very much. Don't look for laughs here."

Also, I didn't enjoy the author's writing style. I found it choppy and difficult to follow. Some paragraphs were one sentence. Some "sentences" were merely fragments. Some paragraphs seemed to being in the middle of a thought.

I thought this book would be a cute and amusing story of a woman who grew up in a family who traveled around the world. If I had known the book was going to be sad and difficult to read, I would have never requested it from a fellow member of Book Mooch. I only kept reading it because it was under 250 pages, and I thought surely I could make it through. I did, but I prefer to read for enjoyment, not to test my endurance. To me, this book was definitely a test.

[Iakovos Alhadeff · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really liked this book. A bit mean I think, but I still liked it a lot.

But I have to say that I find it ridiculous that the author is saying that she is not good at saving money because her uncle and his wife were thiefs and were stealing her father's money. Even if her uncle and his wife were convicted felons this would still be ridiculous as an excuse. Only children are so soft with themselves. Maybe the author was very young when she wrote the book.

But I have to admit that I found this book unique and I have to give it 5 stars!

PS I would give 1 star to the author. 5 stars for the book and 1 star for the author.

[Jen · Rating 3 out of 5]

A Jewish family history meets Vita-Sackville West

[Ellen · Rating 3 out of 5]

A book of snippets from the author's family's lives that don't really give insight into anyone but instead was a series of name-drops and placename-drops. On some level I understand that third culture kids aren't particularly relatable but the fact that I didn't connect with the author made it that much harder to follow the narrative as it jumped through space and time and family member with no apparent reason and it made it especially difficult to read her account of how she aborted her "mongoloid creature."

(This is the fourth book that my boss has lent me, and the third that completely missed the mark for me.)

[Myra · Rating 2 out of 5]

A very interesting memoir of an Egyptian Jewish family. The book would have been better if it were more well organized and if the writer had a warmer affinity for her family. Hard to be excited or impressed with her attitude toward their wealth and their/her frivolous ways.

[Kristy · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the author's story of how she found out about her Sephardic Jewish roots. The stories told by her family are very interesting.