I, the Divine

San Francisco artist and author Rabih Alameddine is a literary gamesman, which is a polite way of saying that much of what he writes is overreaching and pretentious. His first novel, Koolaids: The Art of War, was a vague, extended prose poem about AIDS, the art world, Lebanon's civil war, and Middle East politics in general; most of the stories in his collection The Perv are stylistic experiments, combining florid language with hollow narratives about East-West relations. It's both fortunate and surprising, then, that Alameddine overcomes these flaws in I, the Divine. His richly detailed story is presented in a format that's pure postmodern artifice -- nothing but first chapters -- yet the approach enhances the story rather than cluttering it.

Each chapter is a failed attempt by Sarah Nour El-Din, a Lebanese expatriate, to write her memoirs. Whether she begins by telling the story of her grandfather in Lebanon, her first boyfriend, her ex-husbands, or her life in San Francisco, every path leads to a literary cul-de-sac. There's both pleasure and frustration in Alameddine's style-shifting: At various points, El-Din tries writing in French, recasts her life as a novel, and shuttles between belletrist and gossipy family memoirist. But the effect is purposeful; with each new approach, El-Din sheds another layer of her pretension, revealing another truth about her humanity. Alameddine's moral: Everybody who starts a memoir is either hiding something or spinning the truth. A finished memoir is merely a sustained lie, the one the author most fervently wants you to believe.