All the Women Inside Me

In Elhassan’s ambitious if sometimes abstruse latest (after The Ninety-Ninth Floor), a sheltered young woman struggles to find love and a sense of self. Sahar grows up in 1990s Tripoli, Lebanon, with parents who enforce a regimented routine and discourage laughter. She drifts through life disconnected from reality and imagines the lives of people she sees outside her window. Soon after she meets a young man named Sami, she marries him to escape her home life. But he turns out to be controlling and abusive, and after she takes a job in an insurance company, she begins an affair with co-worker Rabih. Because Sahar has children with Sami, she feels she cannot leave him, and eventually makes a drastic decision. While the narrative concentrates on Sahar’s interior life, it shines when the scope widens and Elhassan takes in a bigger picture (“buildings stacked precariously atop each other, their walls leaning against one another for support, a reflection of the spirit of the community residing within them”). A problem, though, emerges in Sahar’s sometimes poorly executed unreliable narration (“Sometimes facts threaten the truth”), as it’s not always clear what is real and what is a figment of Sahar’s imagination. Still, Elhassan succeeds at getting readers to care about Sahar’s struggle to survive. (July)