Contemporary Morocco is the setting for Meryem Alaoui's lively debut novel about a sex worker with an indomitable spirit. In Straight from the Horse's Mouth, translated from the French by Emma Ramadan, Jmiaa introduces herself by saying, "To live, I use what I've got." And what she's got, beside her body, is moxie to spare. Jmiaa admonishes readers, "You only have one life. What's the point of filling it with nothing?"
She fills her life with television, drinking and, obviously, her work. Jmiaa relates her experiences as a sex worker with brutal honesty and a shrug, but she never sees herself as a victim. She lives with Halima, another sex worker who frustrates Jmiaa with her defeatism. Halima was respectable before circumstances led her to Jmiaa's tiny, squalid apartment, and she seems to be wallowing in her fate. Jmiaa, on the other hand, is determined to keep her eyes open for opportunities to move forward. So, when she's tapped to play a sex worker in an indie film being shot in her neighborhood, she jumps at it. Unsurprisingly, her larger-than-life personality transfers to the big screen, and she experiences a life she was sure she was meant for all along.
Jmiaa isn't entirely likable, yet her charisma never flags. This is a funny and profane book; joyful in its celebration of a life lived expansively and filled with the sights and sounds of Casablanca. Straight from the Horse's Mouth received critical acclaim when it was first published in France, and will be equally welcome in this ebullient English translation. --Cindy Pauldine, bookseller, the river's end bookstore, Oswego, N.Y.