Sweetness in the Belly in Around the World

Jun 04, 2010 Friederike Knabe rated it it was amazing

Shelves: canadian-lit

Sweetness in the Belly is the moving and heart-warming story of Lilly Abdal. Told in her own words, it adds to it a special liveliness, directness and authenticity. Camilla Gibb has succeeded in creating a rich and detailed account of the life of a young woman caught between cultures and identities. It is also a love story at different levels. Her narrative alternates between periods during the four dramatic years in Ethiopia and those during ten years in London, after leaving Ethiopia in 1974, Sweetness in the Belly is the moving and heart-warming story of Lilly Abdal. Told in her own words, it adds to it a special liveliness, directness and authenticity. Camilla Gibb has succeeded in creating a rich and detailed account of the life of a young woman caught between cultures and identities. It is also a love story at different levels. Her narrative alternates between periods during the four dramatic years in Ethiopia and those during ten years in London, after leaving Ethiopia in 1974, at the end of Emperor Haile Selassi's reign.

Gibb's novel is fast moving and particularly compelling in its portrayal of Lilly's life in the holy city of Harar. At the same time, she is conveying in-depth insights into the respective realities there and in England and establishes the religious and cultural context that surround the heroine with great subtlety and credibility.

Alternating with accounts of her time in Harar, as she grows into an adult (1970-1974), Lilly narrates her life in London, beginning fifteen years after leaving Ethiopia. Now working as a nurse and living in a poor housing estate, she remains an outsider who does not fit into British reality. Committed to preserve her religion and her Ethiopian culture, she befriends Amina, her Ethiopian refugee neighbour and creates an oasis of "home" around them. While Amina and her family adjust more and more to the western lifestyle, Lilly clings to the memories of her previous life and the people in it. But developments force her to reassess and look into the future rather than hanging on to the past. Will she be able to do it?

Gibb's rendering of the East African refugee scene is as realistic as her portrayal of conditions in Harar. Her novel is grounded and enriched by her thorough research and personal experiences with the cultures and the places she evokes. Ethiopians went through famine and deprivations during the early 1907s, a time that ended in the uprising against and eventual removal of the Emperor. Gibb brings this context into the novel without overburdening the reader. She finds a convincing balance between the personal and the general keeping the book a page turner from beginning to end ...more

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Sep 11, 2013 Marieke rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 2013, fiction, islam, canada, cbc-books

I really loved reading this. It's not a perfect book; there were little things here and there that bugged me, but I got so sucked in and felt so many things while I read it, that I decided to rate up to five stars. Also I was really impressed with how Gibb handled Islam and female circumcision in this novel--no easy feat for a writer from a Western background. I hope she writes more novels. ...more

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Sep 18, 2011 Tanya rated it really liked it

Shelves: around-the-world-2012

(Around the world - Ethiopia)

This started off a little slowly, but it grew on me. I really enjoyed the Muslim female perspective and the cultural differences of Ethopian islam with the stricter middle eastern variety.

Plot: British girl's parents killed in accident in Morocco, and she was brought up in medrassa. MOved to Ethopia where she live with local family and taught Koran to local children. Fell in love, before moving back to England because of Ethiopian civil war. ...more

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Jul 25, 2009 Erma Odrach rated it it was amazing

Sweetness in the Belly is set in Ethiopia, a country dealing with conflict, violence, and hunger. But it is also a love story when Lilly Abdal, an orphaned English/Irish girl growing up in Muslim Africa, falls for Aziz, a doctor. Beautifully and smoothly written, it is a very real and emotional read.

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