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Book ReviewsKoolaids |
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Book: Koolaids
Written by: Rabih Alameddine |
Publisher: Picador USA
Average Customer Rating: 4.96 / 5
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Stunning. Pure poetry
Rating:
5 / 5
This is an extraordinary book. I read it in a swoop. The language, imagery, and sheer passion of the writing held me rapt. I am half Lebanese, I was raised in Lebanon and since the Civil War I've lived in many countries. Like Alameddine says, I no longer "fit" - this is true of so many people who have come to America and I don't think there's a single novel that writes so beautifully, so disturbingly, so deliriously about the sense of dislocation one feels when one is "of" one country, yet "in" another. Aside from this, as a novel pure and simple, this is an extraordinary book, poetic, charged and utterly riveting. A must read for all.
Original and insightful novel.
Rating:
5 / 5
For any gay man who participated in gay/queer communities in the late 1980's, reading "Koolaids" will be like experiencing a long, accurate and precise memory of those furious and painful times (details of life during the epidemic are interspersed with vignettes about war-era Beirut. Trust me - it works.)
"Koolaids" is not just a good book. It is angry (Remember when people were angry? Ah, what a lark!), funny, queer and smart. It is original. Many previous AIDS memoirs/fictions have been precious accounts of loss, sweaters and Paris. Really. If you pick up the three most famous gay male memoirs about AIDS, you will read as much about France and good cheese and fine wine as you will about loss and disease. These books say more about the authors' sartorial and gastronomic preferences than about the epidemic or the times. "Koolaids", on the other hand, reminds us of the uses of anger and grief, and of what the virus did to individuals, communities and a nation. By returning the reader to a wholly different era, "Koolaids" makes history.
buy this book
Rating:
5 / 5
This book is brilliant, able to be humorous and entertaining even as it takes you into some of the darkest moments of our time. The juxtaposition of the AIDS crisis in America and the War in Lebanon is an effective choice, it creates a new perspective to two very emotionally difficult and recent parts of our history that we are still collectively coming to terms with. as a gay lebanese-american i found the voices of Alameddine's characters to be particularly haunting. Mr. Alameddine is an exciting and daring writer and I anxiously anticipate his new works while re-reading his currently published books.
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