Hideous Kinky: A Novel

Freud used the facts of her own bizarre childhood to craft this kinky and pretty darned sad novel of Julia, a hippie mom rambling through North Africa with her two young daughters in those hazy, lazy Hippie years of the 60s. The story is told exclusively through the voice of 5yo Lucia, so the whole odd event is full of images, hints, suspicious, limited observations, and wishes more than on concrete facts. Mom's lovers and the neighborhood street performers, missionaries, beggars, hashish, henna, and holy men add to the exotic atmosphere of this book. The child is mother to the adult for most of the movie, and Lucia yearns for nothing so much as a normal mum to take care of her and send her to school and help her with her homework. Instead, Mum goes off to seek Sufi enlightenment - and comes very close to misplacing one of her children forever.

AUUUUGH! Another good book completely changed in the movie! The movie was good, but so many changes it is not the book. The book is better of course. It is interesting, you can almost feel the hot sandiness of it. The visualization is very good! It is a bit fluffy for my taste. Well written and keeps you reading! I bought the book after seeing the movie, oops, well they are 2 stories about a woman and her daughters in Morocco, that is it, sad what movies do to a good book. I do like the book.

This is a story of the five-year-old narrator and her older sister dragged to Morocco by their hippie mother. The main character is lovable but not credible; no five-year-old has such vocabulary and/or observation power. Some fine local color, but the ending is disappointing.

Hideous Kinky was such a wonderful book in writing from a child's perspective. Telling a tale of life as an outsider in Morocco, it brought out the heartache of a woman's struggle to find a spiritual path while supporting her daughters. Exotic and told from a time of hippies, this book explains the culture in a way that is true to expats. Well done.

I really enjoyed this child's-eye recollection of a lengthy visit to Morocco with a hippy mother and slightly bossy older sister back in the 70s. The country is vividly depicted, and the child's automatic acceptance of what seems to us utter fecklessness on the part of the mother comes through well. Hashish, a local boyfriend and a decision to embrace Sufism (and hitch-hike with the younger girl to a religious centre in Algiers, while off-loading the older onto a family in Marrakech) strike the 21st century reader as unwise; and while the narrator accepts things, her older sister is hankering after things like school, a father figure and mashed potato.Humorous moments abound - I loved the hennaed prostitutes constantly stealing the baby's nappies as turbans.

Movie very similar to the book. Great read!

I read this engaging story, set in Marrakech, before I visited the city earlier in the year and it helped to give me a feel for the place. Although set in the 70s, this novel described the architecture, the atmosphere and the hustle and bustle that is very evident today. Maybe some of the novel's characters are still there, swapping stories in the square or selling fruit and vegetables in the marketplace! This is a light and entertaining read which, in the end, perhaps says more about mother/child relationships that it does about Marrakech.

This is absolutely enchanting book full of colors and spice, showing us not only the adventures of a mother and her daughters on a trek of self discovery through Morocco, but also the panorama of a country that was the Mecca of the hippie movement of the 70's. It is a vivid recollection of said adventure, seen from the point of view of a 5 year old child.

This book was advertised as being in good condition but I would dispute that. The edges of the pages were yellow. If it come into my charity bookshop, I would put it in the trash.

Excellent

Lovely book , really enjoyed it!