Of Pores and Souls

The Daily Star reviewsAboulela's Minaret:

Her account of a post-Ramadan party where all the women in Najwa's mosque unveil themselves for the Eid reads like a lame, sanitized knockoff of "Sex in the City." The way Aboulela writes about notions of mercy doesn't square with Najwa's immature and stubbornly superficial worldview. To insure the book's target reader - clearly dim-witted and definitely Western - understands said notions of mercy, Najwa explains: It's like "exfoliation, clarifying, deep-pore cleanse - words I knew from the beauty pages of magazines and the counters of Selfridges. Now they were for my soul not my skin." Is she joking?

Hmmm... I hope so.