Koolaids
- Book Review,
by Rabih Alameddine
From Library Journal
Alameddine is a respected painter who brings great visual skill to his first literary work. The novel is really an effectively conceived collage of the viewpoints of several characters: Samia is a Lebanese woman crisscrossing east and west Beirut during its darkest days, Mark is an HIV-positive American who faces his own end while mourning the steady loss of friends during the worst years of the AIDS plague, and Mohammed is a belligerent and misunderstood painter who tries to give form and meaning to it all, just as the author means to do through his fiction. War, death, sex in a morally empty and meaningless world?when mixed on Alameddine's palette, they make for fascinating reading. To make his point, Alameddine freely cites thinkers whose takes on life and death he finds laughably wanting. He also includes news reports which, when juxtaposed with the situations of his characters, makes us see by just how far those not living the horror can miss the truth. Immediate, pitched, and frightening to read, this work is recommended for larger public and academic libraries.?Roger W. Durbin, Univ. of Akron, OHCopyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
The New York Times Book Review, Mark Lindquist
Despite some interesting ideas and memorable imagery, his book demonstrates little feel for narrative.
From Kirkus Reviews
This emotionally charged first novel by a Lebanese-American writer and artist is an impressionistic collage that skillfully juxtaposes its gay protagonists' defiant encounters with AIDS, the embattled recent history of Lebanon during its own civil war and ``the Israeli siege of Beirut,'' and more general permutations of estrangement from society, family, and nation. Alameddine's characters (who are, unfortunately, not always clearly distinguished) include a Lebanese matriarch whose diary records the sufferings of her kindred throughout a 30-year span of political turmoil, several variously involved San Franciscans during that city's own plague years, andmost cruciallya painter whose garishly violent canvases are calculated distortions of his Lebanese homeland's chaotic past and present. The ``novel'' assembles summaries of that history together with journal excerpts, letters, poems, discursive statements often framed as aphorisms (``in America, I fit, but I do not belong. In Lebanon, I belong, but I do not fit''), and aborted literary works. If we're occasionally unsure whos speaking (or being addressed), there's no mistaking the books furious argumentative energy here--whether its scattershot wit takes the form of mocking allusions to the biblical Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse; a rudely satirical playlet whose characters include Eleanor Roosevelt, Krishnamurti, Julio Cortazr, and (a probably gay) Tom Cruise; imaginary conversations with eminent writers (Borges, Coover, and Updike among them); or parodies whose subjects range from Middle Eastern scriptures to American movies and TV shows (one of The Waltons is particularly droll). Alameddine stumbles when fulminating nakedly against American materialism and heterosexual hypocrisy--yet some of his baldest declarations are among his finer effects (for example, an HIV-positive protagonist's lament that ``nothing in my life is up to me''). A wildly uneven, but powerful and original portrayal of cultural and sexual displacement, alienation, and--in its admirably gritty way--pride. (Author tour) -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Review
"Daring, dazzling . . . a tough, funny, heart-breaking book."—Greg Burkman, Seattle Times
"Refreshing . . . often brave, full of heart . . . This novel is vigorously ambitious, its voice unique."—Portland Oregonian
"An absolutely brilliant book—daring in its somersault of literary feats and allusions, an antidote for anyone who suffers from the blahs or an excess of self-satisfaction. I hope it's widely read."—Amy Tan, author of The Joy Luck Club
"Provocative, emotionally searing."—Publisher's Weekly
Book Description
An extraordinary literary debut, this book is about the AIDS epidemic, the civil war in Beirut, death, sex, and the meaning of life. Daring in form as well as content, Koolaids turns the traditional novel inside out and hangs it on the clothesline to air.
From the Publisher
Rabih Alameddine's "Koolaids is the companion guide to The Tibetan Book of the Dead, The Diary of Anne Frank, and the history of the world. It is hysterical in both senses, hilarious and loudly disturbing. (Where else does Krishnamurti meet Eleanor Roosevelt and Tom Cruise?) Like Zen koans, Koolaids issues pronouncements while pointing out the absurdities of any kind of truth. It contemplates the meaning of death while redefining the meaninglessness of life. It looks at the great cycle of history, destiny, and literature and puts them on spin and recycle. This is an absolutely brilliant book - daring in its somersault of literary feats and allusions, an antidote for anyone who suffers from the blahs or an excess of self-satisfaction. I hope it's widely read. Just think of the fascinating dinner conversations and epitaphs it could spawn. I think Kant, Jung, and Borges would approve." --Amy Tan "Alameddine is a respected painter who brings great visual skill to his first literary work. The novel is really an effectively conceived collage of the viewpoints of several characters. ...War, death, sex in a morally empty and meaningless world--when mixed on Alameddine's palette, they make for fascinating reading." --Library Journal "[T]he AIDS epidemic in America, and the Lebanese civil war, are combined here by debut novelist Alameddine into a provocative, emotionally searing series of connected vignettes ...For a nonlinear novel the images chosen retain a remarkable cohesion. Often sexually frank or jarringly violent, they merge into a graphic portrait of two cultures torn from the inside." --Publishers Weekly "[A] refreshing statement of honesty and endurance ...funny, brave full of heart and willing to say things about war and disease, sexual and cultural politics that have rarely been said so boldly or directly before." --The Sunday Oregonian "Koolaids is a wildly imaginative tour de force--impressive, stunning. Alameddine's is the authentic voice of the prophet, speaking from the man-made wilderness of the twentieth century. Like all great prophets, he speaks with equal parts anger and love. Dark and funny and despairing and literate, and finally, in its unvarnished truth, affirming: 'Amid all the craziness, I am here. We are here.'" --Fenton Johnson, author of Scissors, Paper, Rock and Geography of the Heart: A Memoir "This is a fantastic novel that every American should read. In an era in which the most conventional yuppie fiction rooted in suburban angst is being passed off as the New American Literature, Alameddine shows how formal invention can derive organically from the emotions of the experiences at stake, and not glib device. Koolaids communicates with crystal clarity because the content reflects the need for justice. This is the kind of writing that can transform American culture." --Sarah Shulman, author of Rat Bohemia, Girls, Visions and Everything and Empathy
About the Author
Rabih Almeddine is a successful painter who has had gallery shows throughout the United States, Europe and the Middle East. He lives is San Francisco. He is also the author of The Perv.
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