To not even be able to look at a man without someone thinking something was going on or always having to watch what I say would likely kill me. I do know I wouldn’t want to be a woman living there. Granted many live much freer lives now than in the past but the old customs are still alive. The culture in a country like Saudi Arabia fascinates me simply because of the customs they live by. I am always interested in novels that deal in any way with other cultures. Will they survive? Will love ever again blossom where it has died? This is what will ultimately lead Faisal to do the unthinkable to his family. In short, they do not follow the customs in which he is becoming more and more obsessed with. He believes they don’t spend the amount of time in prayer that they should and that the women in the family are allowed more freedom than they should have. Faisal is growing ever resentful of his family’s lifestyle. Faisal though is a young boy about to take a path that can lead him nowhere good. Mariam is pretty level headed although, even at fourteen, she believes strongly in equality for women. On the sidelines are their children Mariam and Faisal. Rosalie refuses to have much to do with him and tells him he has ruined their family forever. He is entitled, according to the law, to have another wife and that is how he goes about justifying what he’s done to Rosalie. Abdullah is the first to do so and in this he refuses to change his mind.
None of the rest of his family – his brothers – believe in taking second wives. They have the freedom to live their lives quite normally. He doesn’t hold his wife or children strictly to the customs that had once plagued the country. For the most part Abdullah believes in living more of a modern life. Everything she knew and believed in when it came to her life and love with Abdullah now seemed so wrong and she couldn’t fathom ever feeling and knowing that love again. This discovery totally uproots her life in so many ways. That is until she discovered that her husband had taken a second wife and even more than that, he had been hiding it for two years. Meeting Abdullah in America and then falling in love, marrying, and building a life in Saudi Arabia was exactly what she had always wanted and for more than twenty years she was happy and fulfilled. Even at a young age she developed a love for the country and always knew she wanted to go back after going to college in America.
Rosalie is American born but spent her childhood in Saudi Arabia.
The Ruins of Us by Keija Parssinen is a novel of many things – family, love, and discontent.
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