3 out of 4 stars
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I'm going to come right out and say it straightaway: Ignore the title. Ignore the cover. Neither do this book justice whatsoever. The title sounds like something you'd have as a working title while you're ploughing through the writing, with every intent to change it to something more clever at the end, and the cover looks more suited to the kind of book you’d get free with a copy of Cosmopolitan. But within a sentence you realise that My Trip To Adele is a well-written book which doesn't at all match its packaging.
The book tells three different stories concurrently: Elias, a Moroccan man living in Rome, who is struggling to find a lost love from many years ago from whom he has not been able to move on; Yaser, in the USA, who is unhappy in his marriage and is starting to rebel against it; and Nadia, a single mother in Jordan, who is fighting for independence for herself and her eight-year-old son from her abusive and irresponsible ex-husband. With their different lives and circumstances, they nevertheless share one thing in common: Their love for Adele - yes, Adele, the singer Adele - and a determination to see her concert in Verona. Does that not sound whimsical? Rom-com-esque? Or, looked at cynically, an attempt to capture immediate interest with a pop culture reference?
But it's not. It's a thoughtful and well-expressed look at human emotion and psychology, written seriously but nevertheless in an attention-capturing and pleasing way. It's sensitive writing but does not wallow or whine. It looks at family relationships, spiritual relationships and romantic relationships and what can pull them apart and cause cracks, and how they can be fixed. It's beautiful and sensible and nothing at all like the cutesy, light-hearted, not very profound story that is implied by the title, cover and even the premise.
From the first sentence, the writing worked for me. I found it beautiful and evocative. All three stories are written in the first person, and though I did feel some similarities between the three voices, it didn’t detract from the storytelling.
Although the book is billed as three different people from three different cultures, all three are Muslims and their faith plays a massive part in all of their different stories. There is examination of faith in each story, at times to a fault because I felt the tone became quite lecturing upon occasion, and I felt that there were assumptions made of how relationships should be run as a result. Personally I found the approach to male-female relationships a little frustrating. There was a little too much “men are lustful, women prefer family, that’s the way of the world” for me. There was an assumption that every male character wanted sex, even paid sex, but needs and desires for romance and physical intimacy never came up for Nadia. It was also very “Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus”: male-female relationships are in no way seen as friendships, and this is just so far from my own experience that it felt a little depressing.
Some storylines resonated better with me than others. The unhappy marriage, in which all communication has become stilted and a minefield, was very realistic. And Nadia in Jordan, being overridden by male family members at every turn, being made helpless by a culture that priorities men over women, was teeth-grindingly resonant. But Elias, on his romantic/spiritual journey to Marrakesh, didn’t work for me at all. His love, who is both considerably younger than him, and a prostitute whose mother is a pimp and whose father is a cross-dressing street dancer, is implausibly profound and eloquent, and seems to me to be there only so that Elias can explore his notions of love and life at her.
Character development of anyone other than the three leads is absolutely minimal, including Yaser’s wife, Nadia’s son and the afore-mentioned Elias’s love interest, Malika. There are also some random things thrown in that might make more sense if they were developed further – the relationship between Elias and Malika’s mother, or that between Yaser and his bit on the side, Isabelle. There are a few typos, and there is one bizarrely disjointed piece of storyline towards the end that I can’t elaborate on without spoilers but which had me literally turning back a few pages because it was so discordant I thought that I must have missed something.
Throughout the story the characters will overhear snatches of Adele songs, and the author will type out some lyrics to show how meaningful they are to his characters' lives. This may appeal to some people (in fact, I know it does, because I’ve read other people’s reviews), but it felt contrived to me. Also, the actual trip to Adele feels rather redundant by the time you get there.
My Trip To Adele is not a long book. If there had been more background and character development, which I feel that it would have benefitted from, it could have been double the length. But since the author was focusing on the three main characters, I feel that it covered everything that needed covering. I am giving this book a rating of 3 out of 4 stars, because for all my nit-picking and analysis above, I did actually really enjoy reading it. I liked the writing style and I liked peeking into the characters’ lives. The typos and my other issues above prevent me from giving it four stars, and I think if I gave it two stars it would imply that I’m not recommending it, and that’s not quite right. But I think it wouldn’t be for everyone, and hopefully my review gives an idea of why, and how to decide whether it’s for you or not.
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Trip to Adele
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