Tomboy (European Women Writers)

Beautifully written novel about the author's French/ Algerian dualities. The passages about Algeria are luminous, equal to those written about Algeria by Albert Camus.

Moving, poetic, exotic, intelligent. Not really a taut narrative, but clearly a female soul in pain and searching for self.

This is a book about in-between-ness. About a young woman searching for her identity and finding that it doesn't fit neatly into any of the categories she sees around her. Nina is the daughter of an Algerian father and a French mother, living in Algeria during a time of rising conflict between Algeria and France, and her identity is being pulled apart at the seams.Nina's state of being in-between in terms of national and cultural identity is mirrored in her struggle with her sexual identity. The English title "Tomboy" seems too trite of a translation - the French title conveys more of a sense of something in her gender identity being lacking, missing, lost. The fact that the story unfolds in Algeria makes Nina's struggle with her femininity even more poignant - in this context separation from the world of men involves a constriction of so many aspects of life. So her struggle continues: French or Algerian? Male or female? Child or adult?The language and style of this book are as important - or more so - than the plot itself. The language is forceful, sonorous, repetitive - like waves breaking against the shore. There's hardly any dialogue: it's an internal story, strewn with thought fragments and angst. The language itself takes on such importance that the book almost reads as poetry in prose form. I couldn't call it an enjoyable book, but it's a powerful ode to the displacement and identity confusion that stem from wars like that in Algeria during the 1960s.