Bride of the rain

The social and family relationships form the referential world from which Buthaina Al Essa draws in her novel "Bride of the Rain," as she monitors a set of intertwined, multi-party, and different-in-visions relationships. These relationships are revealed through her treatment of the subject of twins Osama and Asmaa. Fate willed that the handsome boy would be the father, while the girl became an ugly-faced girl living in psychological isolation and disappointments. And if each character in the novel has a destiny that they contribute to shaping, then often the general background and fate played the main role in determining the course and destiny of the main characters. They are the two protagonists, Osama and Asmaa. In this atmosphere, the novel revolves, often interspersed with phrases in Kuwaiti dialect. The novelist succeeded through this in weaving a story/personal tale of a girl living on the margins, betrayed by days, and made her life a series of assumptions, and a narrow margin of options. Even the chosen margin came in the context of reaction, escape from reality, and adaptation to new developments, where she chose to live with her brother because the father separated from the mother and married three other women, so Asmaa has twenty brothers and sisters she does not know. She says somewhere in the novel: "When we are born females, we are born with issues because the world is equipped with ready-made technologies to limit us... I think that a woman who grows up in a homeland or in a patriarchal home is a lucky woman because she has the opportunity to fight. She has many opportunities to become a model. She is considered grown simply because she is female and is equipped with a ready-made issue..." And based on this statement, which in turn summarizes the life and story of this character, the writer wanted to imply that a person does not choose their life themselves, but fate, coincidences, and the place of birth play a role in the entire course of their life. Even our shapes are not chosen, our colors, and our environments. Is it human incapacity in front of the inevitability of reality? As Asmaa says in the depths of the novel: "Maybe the world should stop appearing, the features of things should be concealed, all these colors, smells, and tasks that need to be done... I wish they would become extinct... Mercy on me and all the unable to keep up, to be consistent, unable to withstand the world's fire like a suppurating pimple, a little noble extinction, and much whiteness, blank lines, listening... and there I can think less, close my eyes more, and let the world go without me." Thus, despite the pains of the novel, Buthaina Al Essa was able to present a work in which literature fulfills its function and role, benefits, entertains, speaks, and makes one think, and deserves to be read. Book information: • Author: Buthaina Al Essa • Year of publication: 2012 • Publisher: Dar Al Arabiyah Lil Uloum Nashiroun • Number of pages: 184