The Quiet Narrative in The Female of the Four Seasons A Reading of Ahmed Taail s Style

Yemenat

Mohammed Al Mekhlafi

There are novels that rely on events and others that rely on ideas, but the novel The Female of the Four Seasons by the Egyptian writer Ahmed Taail does not seem overly concerned with this division. It is a novel that moves calmly, and perhaps slowly at times, focusing more on the lives of its characters and on what happens inside them over time.

From the very beginning, the writer does not try to create shock or major events. Everything proceeds almost ordinarily, and this is what makes the novel feel close to reality.

The characters change gradually, grow tired, lose things they love, and try to continue. Even the small details are given their time in the narration, as if the writer does not want to pass over anything too quickly. This is what I noticed, and perhaps it is the thing that distinguishes the novel the most. It does not depend on suspense as much as it depends on the feeling of life itself, especially as it grows heavier with time, and when a person discovers, after many years, that many things have changed without them noticing at the moment they were changing.

From the outset, The Female of the Four Seasons appears preoccupied with the idea of loss, not in the sense of death or absence, but as a feeling that everything has gradually changed. The world the protagonist once lived in and knew is no longer what it was, or perhaps only its outer form remains. People have changed, and relationships as well. Even the houses that are supposed to give a person reassurance and comfort seem as though they too have lost something old within them.

The character of “Raouf” carries this feeling from almost the beginning of the novel until