Time Remaining One Hour: Part I

Time Remaining One Hour

After Anna getting her french kiss with ST.Clair, I needed to get away from the world of YA for a while and continue exploring the great and magical world of Naguib Mahfouz. The first thing that caught my attention is the location of the story, Helwan (part of greater Cairo). Thing is according to Mahfouz's description, Helwan seems to be beautiful or used to be a beautiful and peaceful city.    

I've never been to Helwan before but I really do want to see the places that he described in the novel like the Japanese Garden. The author managed to describe the Egyptian society through 3 generations from the 1920s till the 1970s. So the 3 generations in the story represent the main ideas and ideologies that represented the Egyptian society and that's the great thing about this book, that Mahfouz managed to describe all of these ideas through this family, in other words, this family here represented the Egyptian society with its changes and evolution in the period between the 1920s till the Yom Kippur war. What's really frightening is that if you compare what happened in the novel and what's happening in the Egyptian society you'll realize that history does repeat it self. It's novels like that one that gives you true indications about history in general, as important history books are but things like cinema, songs and novels give you an idea of how the society looked like in the past. Our main character is an old woman called Sania and her sons, daughters and grandsons. At first, we get to see Sani's marriage to a nice guy called Hamid and how she overcame that she wasn't highly educated by reading and keeping an eye on the latest news and political developments. We then go to see her children as the grow up and everyone start their own political ideas and identity. The most notable case is Mohamed and his involvement with the Muslim brotherhood and as the novel goes by he starts to get deeper and deeper into the group and their ideas till he reaches the conclusion that Islam might be the real answer to Egypt's problems especially after the 1952 Coup. The MB were hopeful that Nasser's regime might give them the chance that they were waiting for and start to take a bigger part in the political life but Nasser eliminated them completely from the society and tore the group down leaving them broke, beaten but a bit more determined and Mahfouz put all of these elements into Mohamed. As much as I don't like the Muslim Brotherhood but Mohamed was a well written character that really loved his group and ideas more than anything else. 

Unlike Mohamed the rest of the family supported Nasser and what he stood for, and till now you will find those who believe in Nasserism as an ideology so in a way the novel describes how most Egyptian turned Nasser into a cult figure and an ideology more than a person. And that't what made the part about the 6 days was really important because it showed how much people were shocked when their idol suddenly fell down and that the strong and powerful leader clashed down. People believed Nasser and his media whrn they told the people that they were attacking Tel Av-iv instead Egyptians woke up in the morning to find out that Israel was in Egypt and defeated the Egyptian army in a humiliating way. As much humiliating the defeat was, what made things worse is how stunned and shocked people were as they saw how weak and unrealistic their leader was, Nasser was no god as people saw him. Thing is the 1967 defeat was so crucial and disastrous that till now you might feel its results, fact is it ended Nasser and his regime in the worst way possible. 

My dad once told me that finding out that the whole Nassersim thing was a big lie made me understand and get what did Mahfouz tried to say through his characters. The ones who were satisfied were the MBs or in our case Mohamed. Mohamed hated Nasser for what he did to him and his group and unlike the rest of the family who loved Nasser, Mohamed hated him and hated his ideas but didn't say this loudly to protect himself and family, it wasn't until Sadat;s era that the MBs started to get what they really want.  Nasser gave people high hopes but after 1967 people found out that they gained absolutely nothing and till now we are still suffering from Nasser's misjudgments. So did Mahfouz hate Nasser?? I don't know the guy but from his novels Mahfouz was really critical to Nasser and his era and I guess what he really hated is how people change their minds and tend to forget or in other words how hypocrite people are but lets talk about this in part 2...

Anna Got Frenched

For me to write this, I had to listen to the God of fuck himself ''Marilyn Manson'' ton concentrate and get my shit together after finishing this novel (I wrote this to piss a certain someone, she'll kill me, I know). 

Here the thing about this book, it's full of cliches and stuff that doesn't make sense plus it's pretty predictable, you weren't expecting Anna to get fingered by ST. Clair, were you?? On the other hand, the story is colorful, it has this happy feeling to it, watered down to make you feel happy and sucked in but once you finish it and give yourself the time to think you'll see what is wrong with the story. So let's put Anna and her french kiss under the knife and let's start the damn review. 

So Anna is teen whose father decided to ship the France to complete her education and the first thing you'll realize that the author has some daddy issue, like for example Anna's dad reminded me of Nicholas Sparks, god damn it!! I hate Sparks, his books and his movies and tbh Perkins made a great job in making the guy look like a total prick though I found nothing with shipping Anna to France, she is a bit annoying. And to prove my theory let's take a loot at ST. Clair and his dad, the guy is a walking asshole, he is this god of assholes as if Perkins wanted us to hate the guy so much. He treats people so well but acts like a total douche with his son and wife. 

On the other hand, the Mum figures in this novel are the opposite. Anna love her mum, ST. Clair has a great bond with his mum, so strong that his Dad is jealous of this strong bond between them that he even prevented him from seeing his mum when she was sick. I somehow can relate to this, I understand where are these guys coming from. I have a shaky relation with my dad but I've a strong bond with my mum so yeah I like this part, I can relate to it. 

Another great thing was the way Perkins described Anna's home sickness and how she was freaked out in Paris. Being away from your family and friends isn't easy. What make me say that because it's how I felt when dad decided to ship me from London to Cairo to stay with mu family and peers. It wasn't an easy move, I was young yes, I was 7 I guess?? But for me everything was weird, the people, the streets, and the fact that Cairo doesn't have public libraries (they aren't that common in Egypt), the whole thing was confusing and it affected me in a lot of ways as the years went by. 

I like how Perkins described Paris, I've never been there before. It reminded me of how John Green described Amsterdam in the Fault in our stars, they both described the cities in such a beautiful and colorful way that makes not visiting them a crime by it self. Though I think Anna should have spent more time checking out Paris but thing is choosing Paris was a great idea to make whoever reading the story feel more charmed and wait for the predictable happy ending with its cliches. 

Now let's start with Anna, she has a serious hair fetish. Throughout the story all she does is smelling St Clair's hair with its shampoo, at some point I expected Anna to masturbate on his hair!! At some point she even inhaled his shaving cream and shampoo. She also has some weird shit to say like when she describe how she loves his hands and that they are the right size, now what will you do with his hands?? Fact is, Anna is so turned on that at some point she wanted to eat and drink him. 

Jokes aside, the whole thing wasn't about the looks though ST Clair is really hot to make the girls connect with the guy but ST Clair cares about Anna, he listens to her, he takes her out, he doesn't want her to feel alone in Paris plus he wants to connect with by showing how interested is he in movies. As much as I felt that there aren't much of common things between them but he tried to connect with her and make her feel a bit safe and secure. I can tell by how Anna acts that her she has self esteem issues, she is beautiful but she doesn't realize that. She doesn't want to look bad in front of her friends so she avoids ordering food though she is in an American school so it'd make sense if who ever runs the Cafe speaks English. Anna has a lot of issues but ST Clair loved that and tried to deal with it. The fact that she feels alone made her make a lot of bad choices and choose the wrong people to date, '' We accept the love we think we deserve'' - Perks of being a wallflower. Toph is a jerk but Anna didn't see that or at least she tried to ignore it until he gave her the finger and started to date her best friend. Anna has a good personality but she has issues with her emotions and feelings. She also knows what she really wants but how the fuck she calls her self a movie critic when she doesn't know that France is the holy Mecca of cinema!! It's like going to England pretending to love football without knowing that they have the premier league. 

And as caring and cliche ST Clair is he has a big issue, he loves Anna but doesn't want to leave his Gf because he is afraid to be alone. That's really fucked up it's like as if she is a back up plan!! and this is a big issue here. Plus he is an idiot, it's obvious that Anna is so much into him and his shampoos but he still feared that she might not be interested!! Plus I think he is one big wimp, his dad wants to enroll him in a certain school?? Tell him to fuck off, the English dictionary is full of swear words to piss the guy off. And the thing is?? As good looking and cute as he is he does have some self confidence issues which makes the whole thing good, these two aren't perfect by all means. 

So as predictable and cliche the plot is but without a doubt it's a nice read with some positives. It wasn't like twilight with it's fucked up and abused relation plus the character development and the step by step build up to the grand finale made the whole thing readable and entertaining. It isn't the best book I've ever read and it isn't the worst. It's a nice and light book that will leave you with a smile on the face...