Customer Reviews

Sweetness in the Belly

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I loved this book. It's become one of my favourites, easily so, and - strangely enough, given the subject matter - I would even call it a comfort read. It's a dark story yet I did not find it depressing for a second, due to the quality of the writing. Gibb has a light touch, and holds back from telling us what to feel or how to react: reading this book was like feeling a breeze against your cheek. Even brutality is rendered bittersweet through the light touch of Gibb's word choices. It is never saccharine, never melodrammatic, and opens a door into a world few of us have any idea or understanding of.

PLOT DESCRIPTION (no real spoilers, but please skip if you prefer not to know!):
Lilly is the only child of a couple of wandering, hippy English parents: "born in Yugoslavia, breast-fed in the Ukraine, weaned in Corsica, freed from nappies in Sicily and walking by the time we got to the Algarve." In Morocco, she's left in the care of the Great Abdal while her parents go jaunting, only to learn she is suddenly an orphan. Raised by the Great Abdal, a muslim Sheikh, and Mohammed Bruce Mahmoud, a "fiery-haired" ex-British Muslim convert, she found that "once I was led into the absorption of prayer and the mysteries of the Qu'ran, something troubled in me became still." When she is 16, she and her friend Hussein make a pilgrimage to the city of Harar in Ethiopia, to the compound of Sheikh Jami Abdullah Rahman, direct descendent of a saint. On route, they stay at the Emperor of Ethiopia's palace, courtesy of a letter of introduction from Mohammed Bruce.

Because Lilly is farenji, white, and the Sheikh is very racist (as is everyone else she encounters there), she is separated from Hussein and sent to live with the sister of the Sheikh's third wife, Noura, an Oromo, while Hussein stays to be one of his disciples. Lilly learns the language of the Hararans, who are not black but consider themselves Arab, who use the local Oromo population as serfs and combine old tradition with Islam. She falls in love with Aziz, a young local doctor, half Hraran, half Sudanese, almost an outcast because he is black. He introduces her to a less all-pervasive interpretation of Islam, and politics.

Famine strikes the north while the Emperor has cavier flown in from Europe for his own dinner. Unrest stirs, the soldiers take over in the name of communism and quickly put in place a military dictatorship. Lilly escapes being rounded up with anyone else who has ties to the Emperor, though she never met him, and makes it to London where she becomes a nurse and, with her friend Amina, sets up an office to keep track of all the refugees, uniting them with family members, all in the hope of finding Aziz's name on a list.

A couple of things I didn't understand: why did Lilly and Hussein stay in Ethiopia, and how did she manage to get through nurse training in England when she'd had no formal education? Minor quibbles...

There are some brutal moments in the story. Most especially disturbing is the scene of female circumscion, which did make me turn green, riveted though I was. I'd seen it on an SBS documentary years ago, the first time I learned that it happened at all (it is illegal, but still practised in many places). The Ethiopan sections are set in the 1970s (Lilly is 19 when she flees), which is not so very long ago. They believed it made women pure, that it kept them from being "on heat", and that they would never get a husband if they weren't infibulated. It's quite terrifying. As Aziz points out, though, it's not actually an Islamic tradition.

But there is a beautiful, delicate balance between the more horrific traditions and superstitions, Islam and a more modern way of thinking. Lilly, as narrator, is never shaken from her beliefs, though she has occasion to question her own nature. She shows a human side to Islam, a side as familiar as Christianity - what I mean is, her religion never comes across as weird, scary, alien etc. The similarities between Islam and Christianity come through clearly. I also liked the "truer" understanding of jihad, as an inner struggle with the flaws of your own nature, not with another person, country or culture.

It is the way this book is written, and Lilly's voice, that make it strangely warm and comforting, as well as humorous (at times), philosophical, world-weary, honest, enlightening, touching. It is such a human story, and I especially find it interesting that it closely follows the lives of women - in Africa and the refugees crowded into the council estate flats in London. It is through the daily lives of women, who worked and cooked and sang and found husbands for their children and kept the old traditions alive, that the city of Harar really comes alive.

There is also insight into the world of refugees and the communities they establish in other parts of the world. While the author confesses she took some liberties with geography and history, still this book fleshed out a country and a people who were only ever, in my mind, images of black skeletons staggering through a desert, thanks to the News. Despite the uglier moments, the uglier side to their world and way of life, the characters were so well drawn that I felt like I knew them personally. I think that this quality, above anything else, is what makes this a "comfort read" for me. I could easily read this many more times, and get more out of it each time.

I was reminded more than once of the novel KITE RUNNER while reading this. Of course, they're totally different books--dealing with totally different themes, but something about the underlying culture and movement of this novel kept bringing me back to that book.

SWEETNESS is not your run of the mill book, being a more meditative look at orphaned Lily, the novel's protagonist. With the books different settings and different takes on religion and their effects, the author has woven a tale that will keep you captivated for hours. I read somewhere that this is Gibb's third novel and I can't wait to read the others---if they're anywhere as good as this she's bound to become more and more successful. I highly recommend this book along with two others I've recently read that I loved: Brick Lane, and the novel Bark of the Dogwood---both are great, though the settings and ideas are totally different.

This is the sort of information we in the West need to know; we're woefully ignorant about the history, culture, and politics of most areas of the globe but particularly those regions we can't exploit somehow - like the Horn of Africa.

Unfortunately this book is much more a work of history and social anthropology than a work of creative fiction. Few characters compelled and the plot creaked along at a very slow rate.

Do publishing houses employ actual editors anymore- the kind that can recommend substantial culling or improvements to bland passages?

Somewhere inside this book there could be a great story; think what Rohinton Mistry and Zadie Smith do with narratives of dislocation and cultural loss.

Gibb's intention is spot-on -- I blame her publishers for not allocating the resources to make sure the story lived up the material.

Sweetness in the Belly is the moving and heart-warming story of Lilly Abdal. Told in her own words, it adds to it a special liveliness, directness and authenticity. Camilla Gibb has succeeded in creating a rich and detailed account of the life of a young woman caught between cultures and identities. It is also a love story at different levels. Her narrative alternates between periods during the four dramatic years in Ethiopia and those during ten years in London, after leaving Ethiopia in 1974, at the end of Emperor Haile Selassi's reign. Gibb's novel is fast moving and particularly compelling in its portrayal of Lilly's life in the holy city of Harar. At the same time, she is conveying in-depth insights into the respective realities there and in England and establishes the religious and cultural context that surround the heroine with great subtlety and credibility.

Lilly, born in England but, after the murder of her peripatetic parents in Morocco, remains there and is raised at a Muslim shrine by the Great Abdal, a Sufi teacher, to become a devout Muslim. She is eight years old. When forced to leave Morocco at the age of sixteen due to political upheavals, she embarks on a pilgrimage across the Sahara desert to the ancient holy city of Harar in Ethiopia. Not being accepted as a white girl in the household of the local sheikh, she is sent off to live with a poor cousin of one of his wives. Nouria, single mother of four, subsists in a shack in a deprived part of town. Gibb evokes the sounds and smells of the place, creating an authentic portrait of the harsh life of its inhabitants. Nouria and the neighbours start off being hostile of this "farenji" who knows the Qur'an better than they do. It takes Lilly considerable time and effort to be accepted. Seeking to belong where she can feel emotionally an physically safe, she immerses herself completely in their world and accepts the customs of her surroundings. Through Lilly's eyes the reader is introduced to a culture, rich in tradition and rituals. Not all of them are acceptable to Lilly, given her Sufi upbringing and she argues against them. Political developments in Ethiopia and a new circle of friends also challenge her traditional beliefs and behaviour. When she develops romantic feelings for the young attractive doctor she has to chart out her own way.

Alternating with accounts of her time in Harar, as she grows into an adult (1970-1974), Lilly narrates her life in London, beginning fifteen years after leaving Ethiopia. Now working as a nurse and living in a poor housing estate, she remains an outsider who does not fit into British reality. Committed to preserve her religion and her Ethiopian culture, she befriends Amina, her Ethiopian refugee neighbour and creates an oasis of "home" around them. While Amina and her family adjust more and more to the western lifestyle, Lilly clings to the memories of her previous life and the people in it. But developments force her to reassess and look into the future rather than hanging on to the past. Will she be able to do it?

Gibb's rendering of the East African refugee scene is as realistic as her portrayal of conditions in Harar. Her novel is grounded and enriched by her thorough research and personal experiences with the cultures and the places she evokes. Ethiopians went through famine and deprivations during the early 1907s, a time that ended in the uprising against and eventual removal of the Emperor. Gibb brings this context into the novel without overburdening the reader. She finds a convincing balance between the personal and the general keeping the book a page turner from beginning to end. [Friederike Knabe]

I stumbled across this book at my local library while desperate for some fiction to read, and while I'd never read anything like this before, I was curious about the story's setting in Haile Selassie I's Ethiopia, and the story of a refuge woman trying to eek out her new existence in a foreign country. This book is beautifully written and offers an insightful perspective on the variations found within Islamic faith, of love, of the immigrant experience and of self discovery. I can't recommend this novel enough. It's a thoroughly enjoyable read; I consumed it faster than anything else I've read in recent years.

this was a marvelous book. i was immediately sucked into gibb's narrative universe, from the sensational description of the hyaena sunrise on the first page. this is an author hitting her stride. i found her first two books claustrophobic and limited-feeling in scope.

this book breathed. the prose is both elegant and economical. the balance of romance and sobriety was excellent. once you start this story, you will find it hard to put it down.

i had stopped writing for 5 years and when i finished "Sweetness" i was so excited about storytelling that it somehow undid the block. i started writing again.

thank you, camilla gibb.

The voice of Lily is so real, so authentic, so rich in ethnic detail that one is immediately drawn into this imagined story of a woman displaced in two worlds. Stage actress Kate Reading gives an affecting voice reading, capturing all of the erudition and emotion found within this remarkable protagonist.

The daughter of English/Irish parents who spend much of their time in a drug induced haze, young Lily is very much left to herself, free to find amusement on the streets of Morocco. One day she is abandoned by her parents at a Sufi shrine, saying they will return in three days.

That day never comes as they are found slain several weeks later. With no one to shelter her Lily is taken under the wing of an Englishman who has converted to Islam. At the age of eight the child's life begins anew as she will live in the shrine and spend her days in religious study.

At the age of sixteen when many girls are thinking about buying prom. dresses Lily travels to Ethiopia where she teaches the Qur'an to local children. Once again the color of her skin betrays her, and she is an outsider there. Nonetheless, she falls in love with a young doctor.

Years later the outbreak of war forces her to seek refuge in London where as a woman she is again an outsider. Yet, it is her faith that sustains her.

Sweetness in the Belly offers a telling portrait of a far away world that few of us will ever see. Listen and enjoy.

- Gail Cooke

First of all, I was surprised to find only two reviews for this book. Can't begin to understand why...

This is a good book although I found a few things hard to swallow. The courtship between Lilly and her doctor friend in London goes on for a long period of time. It makes you wonder about the doctor, like, why are you chasing this person who shows hardly any interest in you. Get a life!

I also found Lilly's mourning over Aziz also hard to swallow. So she loved someone in the old country; it was her first love, yes, but to close yourself off for how long? 17 years? Oh boy, there's another life that needs to be found.

The descriptions of life in Ethiopia were very good as was the description of Lilly's dilemma regarding finding her Muslim religion in a country (England) where it is becoming more and more dogmatic and rigid. The whole introduction into this Muslim life was very well depicted.

It takes a lot for me to read a book to the end so Sweetness in the Belly is definitely a good book; I just have a few problems with the believability of some aspects of the characters' lives.

Novels set in Ethiopia are hardly commonly found beasts cluttering up the dusty musty shelves of bookstores (and yes new bookstores are often dusty) so Sweetness in the Belly is a novel concept so to speak.

Camilla Gibb's main character Lilly is a White Muslim girl somewhat superficially (her early life is perfunctorily dealt with) plunked amongst the hard, dirty realities of pre-famine Ethiopia. The distant reign of Haile Selassie oversees the conflicting social/economic concerns of Oromo/Harari/Amharic ethnic groups and concomitant religious conflicts bubbling under the surface.

Muslim though Lilly is she is faced with trying to reconcile the changing nature of Muslim practice in the country from it's embrace of saints to it's far stricter/more literal interpretation of the Qur'an with everyday social realities such as female circumcision. Gibb deftly introduces this practice into the novel with a setup that moves from a communal social gathering to horrifying violence which to some degree instills a sense of shock in the reader in parallel to the physical shock felt by the violated young girls.

This scene illustrates one of the novels strong points. Gibb has a beautiful sense of pace with her elegiac storytelling. The novel moves like a languid dream. Love story (which could so easily have turned into a Harlequin Romance in other hands) intertwined with religion, politics, everyday life, she covers it all.

Some have commented that the novel would have been stronger if more attention had been paid to the social/economic effects of Haile Selassie's reign and I at first agreed. Context is important but the novel on reflection seems to gain its strength from a parallel structure.
Lilly moves between worlds (Ethiopia and London) while Haile Selassie's world is far removed from her orbit in a sense emphasizing Selassie's own remove from the country he rules.

One criticism of the novel is that the main character's arrival and subsequent journey within Ethiopia is somewhat contrived and requires a degree of suspension of belief at least initially which I found it hard to overcome. Once achieved however the book is so beautifully paced that it sits on the side table demanding to be resumed.

Another minor criticism is that the novels flow is interrupted by the back and forth required as Lilly narrates her life in Harar and her life post coup in London where she attempts to reconcile her past with her new reality.

These are small quibbles however with a novelist obviously in love with her characters and the country they inhabit. Reader prepare for your journey.

I am only 1/2 way through, but I thought I would share that I only started it yesterday! Once you start reading, you can't stop! I am really enjoying it so far. The only thing I do not like is the constant references to a religion and language I know nothing about.

A good read for those who liked "The Secret Life of Bees" by Sue Monk Kidd, "The Lovely Bones" by Alice Sebold, and "She's Come Undone" by Wally Lamb.