Status Updates From A History of the Big House:...

Okay… Charif has added in a whore-complex character without a confirmed name. Better yet, one of the characters presented as the most trustworthy source is being misogynistic in description. And then the thoughts that Charif writes for Farid are adjacent to rape culture… Majdalani has been a let down.

I definitely did not predict that book’s final chapter would focus on the financial follies of Farid… it’s somewhat interesting.

I think it’s pretty disappointing that this great escape feels so boring… maybe it wouldn’t, if I felt like the narrator wasn’t so bad at filtering through important details from the unnecessary

Charif… please, buddy, you’re killing me with these long drawn out segments…

Wow, the last five pages had a lot of interesting bits. 1) Djemal Pasha’s failed pre-WWI attempt to win over French political support to get himself into a high office within the Ottoman Empire, being unsatisfied with his Syrian Viceroyship. 2) The acknowledgment of American evangelical missionaries in Lebanon even after WWI had officially begun.

The WWI Turkish government, Ottoman Empire, and France era is one of the most fascinating times to me, and Charif has somehow managed to lose my attention entirely… this is a shlog right now :/

“These last four pages should’ve” is a disappointing realization for me to have while the book is building up to, and presumably close to the most anticipated part of the premise.

Hmmm, what did I want from this book in the first place? The end of chapter 11 feels like a rip off of the Godfather, a story that I don’t really care for in the first place. Also, what? This is going to be a situation where Wakim is framed because he agreed to work with Sunnites? Talk about a narrative reinforcing sectarian prejudices…

Okay, so Wakim is the inventer of the clementine? Hmmm… right. Also, I did note that the topics of discussion that Wakim, Curiel, and Father Barthélemy may have chosen are the introduction of the first Beirut railway (Beirut-Damascus, est. 1895) and the assassination of Alexander of Serbia (1903) arw quite a few years a part. I think this is purposeful, but still notable fact checking.

Okay, this is a man’s book about men, with women sprinkled in her and there. Losing some points Charif…

Hmmmm. Similar to Verghese in the Covenant of Water, Majdalani has underwritten Helene’s perspective in a way that is frustrating. The story requires details to be missing since it’s all a vague foggy list of memories gather from a bunch of elderly people. However, I do propose, since he’s already introduce the option to ‘fill in’ reality with fiction, that he craft SOME several-paragraphs perspective.