Presented by Sealia
Attendees: Agnès, Barb, Betsy, Denise, Evette, Jennifer, Mariannick, Pat, Peggy, Rosie, Pat, Sealia, Susan, Wendy
Sealia began by explaining why she suggested this book for the February discussion. She read about it in the Mount Holyoke Alumni Quarterly Magazine. It’s a quick read and it resonates with our group’s experience of changing countries and languages. She gave a few details about the author’s life. Mariam Navaid Ottimofiore calls herself “an expat since birth.” Born in Karachi, Pakistan, she took her first steps in Manama, Bahrain and attended her first school in New York City, in the United States. She has a B.A. in Economics and Political Science from Mount Holyoke College, and has worked in various countries. With motherhood, she decided to become a full-time writer, writing mainly books of advice for globally mobile families. This is her first and only novel.
Sealia’s first question was about the book’s title. Does it fit the novel? Readers felt that it announced a probable detective story, but that isn’t what the novel is. Sealia then asked if the three women have something to feel guilty for. Some felt that they were not guilty of anything; others nuanced this sweeping pardon and focused on the guilt of a particular character.
Some argued that Kate’s guilt about killing her favourite teacher in a drunken accident is legitimate though others felt that it was pardonable because of her lack of knowledge about her act. We all agreed that Fatima’s guilt about being the target of her uncle’s pedophiliac lust was imposed on her by her mother. Though victims of sex crimes often do feel guilty, they are blameless.
We discussed the difference between guilt and shame. In the context of the novel, they are feelings that are self-imposed. Guilt is an internalised sense of wrong-doing while shame is something one feels in front of others. Both are induced by culture. We agreed that in Muslim culture women are blamed for inspiring desire in men, although rape victims are made to feel guilty in Christian cultures too.
What about the “Say Goodbye” part of the title? Barb said that the characters can’t say goodbye because of culturally induced guilt. They are paranoid about judgments that they imagine others making. Even if you change your country you can’t escape your culture. You can’t say goodbye to your guilt. Fatima and Abena manage to confess to their friends and loved ones and find peace. They can therefore settle in Portugal. Kate can’t open up to her friends about her past. She holds on to her secret, and so she leaves yet another country precipitously without saying goodbye. Wendy thought that she is maybe the guilty one referred to in the title.
A criticism of the novel shared by the group is that characters and plots were not treated in enough depth. Evette felt that this could have been three different novels if the stories had been properly developed. Kate’s story in particular is complex, and we are only given droplets of it. Denise thought that there were two novels there, one about the ex-pat experience and the other a mystery story. The latter is not properly dealt with at all. Evette found the idea of the book good—just not achieved. Like Sealia, we were drawn in by the blurb only to be disappointed.
In an e-mail about the book, Katharine disagreed with the tag line on the front page:
"3 women; 3 secrets; 3 broken lives"...... She wrote: “Three broken lives? Are they? I didn’t feel that the women felt their lives were broken, now that they had re-started their lives in Portugal. I think it should have read " 3 women; 3 fresh starts" .... but too many secrets. Will they catch up with them?"
We all found the attempt to create suspense very annoying. Revelations are promised from the outset, but they are too long in coming. A character might say something like “We must do everything we can to avoid anyone finding out the truth” (Abena on p. 87), but we are not allowed any closer to the secret (although we might make guesses) until the beans are spilled at the very end. In Abena’s case, none of us found the problem with medical records credible. Abena has had her children since birth and they must have comprehensive and credible medical records for the school.
Susan found all the descriptions of cooking distracting. In an email to Sealia, Katharine said that she enjoyed the descriptions of the food and of the International Day that Abena manages so successfully. However, she adds: “I’m left with a sense of too many endless lists, which feel like padding: ‘plates, silverware, napkins, dishes etc.’” Wendy felt that the descriptions of cafés and restaurants sounded like reviews from TripAdvisor. The author says that this book is her love letter to Portugal. We agreed that that aspect of the book succeeded. Katharine wrote: “I loved the descriptions of Cascais, and southern Portugal - not surprising that people are moving there.”
The writer seems to lack the tools to create depth of character or intricacy of plot. We even wondered whether AI would have done a better job. Denise found the view of American women particularly superficial. Kate is a caricature of the careless American. She doesn’t deal with her situation in an adult fashion. It didn’t seem credible that she could hold down her responsible job at the consulate. For someone who has been given a mission in Portugal, she is ludicrously unprepared. She hasn’t any of the rudiments of the language and she is ignorant about the Carnation Revolution. She should know this.
Fatima has the most depth, perhaps because culturally she is most like the author. Sealia understood Fatima’s guilt because the mother reconfirms and amplifies the shame she would have felt. We all agreed that the portrait of the dominating mother was good. Her rearranging Fatima’s kitchen was a nice detail. Also the relationship is complicated. The mother criticises her daughter but is willing to defend her against the uncle—even to the point of being apparently ready to kill him. Was it an accident? Perhaps, but she conspired to hide the act for which she would have been killed.
We found the ending clumsy and bizarre. The uncle surges back like the monster in a horror film. Then (very melodramatically) he falls off a cliff, after which Fatima digs into a cinnamon cake. The Portuguese teacher Inez is involved in the cover-up of the accident, whereas it would have been more satisfying to have the three friends as witnesses. Sealia shared Katharine’s observation about the uncle’s death: “I don't think the author has read too many police procedurals, otherwise she would have quickly recognized that the police (even the rather useless Portuguese police (cf. Madeleine McCann) would have traced her family via her uncle's abandoned rental car, and it would have cast suspicion on her family about his disappearance.” We all agreed that this was an unsatisfying loose end.
There was some discomfort about the portrayal of people who were not part of the élite international crowd. We noticed that their contacts with citizens of the host country consist of exclusively commercial relationships. Katharine wrote that she felt uncomfortable that the blackmailer was Filipina and the pedophile Uncle was Pakistani. At the least, she asked, “couldn’t the blackmailer have been a white Valley Girl from So. CA with a high level of personal entitlement? It might have levelled the playing field somewhat.”
We discussed the expatriate situation, comparing on the one hand, the expats who move often for work reasons and who don’t form relationships with the nationals to, on the other hand, people married to natives who form relationships with those living in the country. Betsy felt that the novel was accurate in that people look for others in the same situation. Betsy’s friends are bi-national couples who are seen as exotic by people who have never lived outside their country of birth. The depiction of the international festival and the children’ complex identity resonated with Sealia, who spoke about choosing a nationality when you have several options. Abena’s guilt at not visiting Ghana with her children is understandable. The children in the novel have at least two affiliations and they are forming another by adding Portugal.
By the end of our discussion, we were unanimous in thinking that this writer should give up fiction and stick to writing non-fictional advice books.
