The Singularity, Balsam Karam, tr. Saskia Vogel

A quietly devastating, but absolutely riveting, book. It begins with the suicide of a woman stricken with grief over her daughter’s disappearance, intertwining her story with those of her remaining children, and that of a young pregnant woman who witnesses her leap into the sea. It’s a brilliantly unsettling story. The city is never named, yet has an insistent specificity (especially in the recurring refrain of the corniche) that gives the book an eerie allegorical quality — it could be anywhere, it is happening in so many places, it really is happening. The shifts in focus from one character to another are brilliant, too, particularly because the women are also alienated from their surroundings, acutely aware that they are perceived as alien, other, even as their traumatic experiences render them strangers to themselves in a world that feels unreal. There’s an awful detachment punctuated by unbearable moments of awareness. I know this probably doesn’t make the book seem very appealing, and it is tough, emotionally, but it’s also incredible.

I listened to it on audiobook during a long drive — it’s about 3 1/2 hours long — and I think that’s really the way to do it. Whether you read or listen, I can’t imagine doing it little by little. Once it grabs you, it doesn’t let you go.