I, The Divine: A Novel in First Chapters

I, The Divine: A Novel in First Chapters

<p><strong>Named after the "divine" Sarah Bernhardt, red-haired Sarah Nour El-Din is "wonderful, irresistibly unique, funny, and amazing," raves Amy Tan. Determined to make of her life a work of art, she tries to tell her story, sometimes casting it as a memoir, sometimes a novel, always fascinatingly incomplete. </strong></p> "Alameddine's new novel unfolds like a secret... creating a tale...humorous and heartbreaking and always real" (<em>Los Angeles Times</em>). "[W]ith each new approach, [Sarah] sheds another layer of her pretension, revealing another truth about her humanity" (<em>San Francisco Weekly</em>). Raised in a hybrid family shaped by divorce and remarriage, and by Beirut in wartime, Sarah finds a fragile peace in self-imposed exile in the United States. Her extraordinary dignity is supported by a best friend, a grown-up son, occasional sensual pleasures, and her determination to tell her own story. "Like her narrative, [Sarah's] life is broken and fragmented. [But] the bright, strange, often startling pieces...are moving and memorable" (<em>Boston Globe</em>). Reading group guide included.