Celestial Bodies

Celestial Bodies by Jokha Alharthi is an Omani novel about three sisters and their relationships - it sounded like it would be my kind of book, but the execution proved too off-putting for me to finish it, unfortunately. It cycles between various different viewpoints - for the female characters, it's written in third person but with no dialogue punctuation and no way to identify when people are speaking, other than context, which doesn't always make it clear. There's also a lot of summary, a lot of telling and a lot of long, rambling conversations that don't really go anywhere. Then, for the male perspective, it switches to first person and even a different font, with the narrative shifting to a stream of consciousness that goes back and forth in time in a very confusing way. I liked some of the characters and it had some interesting themes of tradition versus progress, but the narrative style was too annoying and difficult to follow for me to persevere.