Somewhere between ‘The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants’ and ‘Sex and the City’ stands ‘Girls of Riyadh,’ a fabulous novel about love in Saudi Arabia.

Author Rajaa Alsanea sets the story up as a series of e-mails that introduce the world to the inner secrets of Saudi women’s lives.

Each week after Friday prayers, the cheeky narrator, known only by her e-mail address [email protected], tells a group of avid subscribers about the exploits these young women get into. The fictional subscribers wait with bated breath to hear about spoiled Gamrah’s rocky new marriage, clever Lamees’s patient ways, romantic Sadeem’s romantic woes and Western-minded Michelle’s daring excursions.

The plot is fun and entertaining, but the true value of this book is in the feeling that readers are getting a glimpse into another world. The voice and insight in ‘Girls of Riyadh’ are incomparable, making it a perfect page turner.

The narrator may be anonymous, but she shows plenty of personality. Before she sets in on her stories she often responds to letters from inquiring readers. Some want to shame her for sharing such salacious secrets; others are just dying to know who she is. So she responds with an air of mystery that is only too tempting. Her teases beg real life readers to turn the page again, and imply that we too can be in on her little secret.

‘Ladies and Gentlemen,’ she begins, ‘you are invited to join me in one of the most explosive scandals and noisiest, wildest all-night parties around. Your personal tour guide – and that’s moi – will reveal to you a new world, a world closer to you than you might imagine.’

Right there she sets up the beauty of ‘Girls of Riyadh.’ Though it was originally published in Arabic, the novel feels extra exotic to an English-speaking crowd. Through the stories, readers find out that the world of the four friends is much closer to the Western world than Westerners may expect. Sure, it’s all dressed up in different clothes and the rules of society vary, but any story of unrequited love, failed love or even flourishing love is familiar like apple pie.

And the Saudi touches? Well those are fun, too. In one chapter Um Nuwayyir (a friend of the clique’s) lays out each and every Arab personality, including the ‘Extremely Religious Type’ and the ‘Wild or Escapee Type.’

The sense that readers are in on a literally veiled secret is delightful.

If it were an American story, ‘Girls of Riyadh’ would be a great, entertaining book, but as a window into a culture that seems so mysterious (and therefore threatening) to many Americans it is significant, poignant, insightful and necessary.

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Published on April 15, 2009 at 12:00 pm