The Egyptian Guide: From Jihad to Joy

Anne-Marie Mackie-Savage reviews a new novel By Evelyn Oliver and Published by Regina magazine

Written in the first person, the Egyptian Guide is the story of reversion, conversion, and the start of a war which begins when the Aswan Dam is destroyed by the Scimitars of Islam, and Christians are blamed. The narrator, Clara Cumberhart, a beautiful Korean-English woman of 24 brought up in a broken home in Canada, is a Travel Management graduate employed in Egypt. When we first meet her, she is in an airport, reading a letter from Azim, a tour guide she met while working, and with whom she formed a chaste relationship. The letter, read between asides from the narrator, reveals his conversion to Christianity from Islam, and the fact that he is in fact working for British Intelligence, the former which leads to his death. His martyrdom is on the steps of the Church where he is about to be baptised, saving the life of the daughter of his Christian friend, Nour, who is also gunned down. Nour's husband, Mansur, is saved from death by an icon ofSt Anthony he was holding, a gift for Azim. Mansur, educated at a Catholic boarding school in the north of England, then Oxford, was baptised on the steps of the church alongside the dying Azim, and is temporarily paraplegic from his wounds. All of this Clara witnesses, as she has been escorted from her plane by the CIA to watch the CCTV footage of the attack, and where she learns of Azim's secret life as an agent. Later accepting a job offer from Mansur, Clara is propelled fully into the life of the billionaire, Mansur, and his daughter Talitha. Reader, she naturally marries him. She enjoys the life of a billionaire's wife, literally wearing his deceased wife's shoes, with some hiccups, until he goes to Egypt to help after the dam is destroyed. I won't tell you the end.

The Egyptian Guide is a long book, spanning about 25 years in 422 pages and 141 chapters, and includes a prologue, three parts, and an epilogue, and has a very broad scope. Every event in Clara's life from the opening to the close of the book has a didactic element which I found detracted from the story telling. Clara's journey back into the Faith is a bit like a tick box from the Catechism, with almost every hot Catholic topic signposted during the tale and expounded upon. We see divorce (Clara's parents), marriage (primarily hers), IVF (Mansur's paraplegia, albeit temporarily, Clara's sister Kitty has MS), abortion (Nour's sister, Vardah Wattles contemplates one), the consecrated life (she has a room in a convent prior to her marriage), homeschooling (she is a mother now), marital difficulties, contraception, separation and reconciliation (hers). And of course, Jonathan the PA, gay and obsessed with Mansur since University. Then there are relics, her dress with Azim's blood on it, Nour's entire wardrobe, the relics she finds on her tour of the UK with Mansur, finding English saints, St Margaret Clitherow for one, prayers before statues, icons, all of which are absolutely Catholic and worthy, but presented in such an obvious way, and cloying at times, that any narrative flow just halts. Clara herself feels rather unreal because she comes across as a rather florid ideal, rather than a living breathing character. Symbolism, and meaning, and coincidence, are all so thoroughly spelled out with regard to incidents and characters that there isn't much room left for individual characters to develop themselves through the actions they perform, and seem 2D as a consequence.

The layout of the book is a bit of a challenge. Indent and spaces between paragraphs together, surely one or the other? I also found chapters only two pages long rather odd, and there are an awful lot of italics, which really don't help Clara's characterisation at all, and again, makes a read less enjoyable. There are also recaps of key ideas which are unnecessary, reinforcing the didactic tone, and it would have been great to have some show-not-tell parts of the book which weren't explained for us. It is an ambitious book about conversion, love, and forgiveness, in a time of hatred, hostility, and war, but it's covering too much ground in not enough depth.

The Egyptian Guide is available from the LMS bookshop, £14.99 + p&p.