I loved this book and would highly recommend it! I'm not sure how it got on my radar, but if you recommended it many thanks. This is also a new to me author, but I"m looking forward to reading something else by her.
What I liked about the book - story line and writing. Every time I picked up the book I felt like I was in Saudi Arabia. The characters were sympathetic- even the ones you didn't like, you simply didn't like them, you didn't hate them.

The story line is fairly simple, the setting is the late 1960s/early 70s, a young couple from OK meet up, get pregnant leave their small town for the TX oil industry and soon find themselves in Saudi Arabia as part of Aramco's expat community living and working there. But "there" is behind the walls in the American compound. So gender roles and class play a part in the story...the multiple layers in the narrative from the various characters adds such a richness to the story.

The author did extensive research and you can tell- it enhances the narrative. Equally compelling was the notes section at the end of the version of the book I had. The story idea was based on the expat experience of someone she knew during that time period, Aramco is a real company.

I'm looking forward to reading another book by Barnes and welcome any recommendations.

This book starts so well.

Ginny's voice as narrator is interesting. She has an intriguing childhood.

And...

There appears to be a mystery here.

But...

What we may have hoped for as readers doesn't last.

Ginny is not a very likable character.

And...

The mystery doesn't seem to move along to help readers believe that it is going to be eventually resolved.

What's frustrating is that it felt like this story had potential.

Great start, great setting, interesting time in history.

But...

No pick up and go flow.

It's readable, but not much more.

And, I truly wanted to like this story.

In the end, I was left frustrated and aggravated, and that is not what you want to do with a reader.

Especially leaving one hanging at the end.

Sorry.

Still...

I would recommend you reading the book just because it might be a great discussion book.

Huh?

Well, sometimes the worst reads, are the best discussions!

I’d be interested to hear your thoughts.

Interesting take on a small town sheltered southern Baptist white woman who gets pregnant, marries her high school sweetheart and then moves with him to Saudi Arabia in the 1960's after their baby dies. Some parts quite fascinating and some utterly unrealistic. The fact that young white husband Mason who gave up a promising college life to marry the pregnant Gin is constantly quoting MLK seems improbable. That Gin a sheltered girl who was beaten by her religious grandpa for wearing short sleeves would suddenly get political and want to explore in a repressed country seems equally unlikely. Perhaps the way the characters were portrayed as sort of one dimensional made this novel challenging. Oh and the ending was pretty infuriating.

I have really mixed feelings about this book. I loved the idea of the book but the execution of it once they made it to Saudi Arabia completely feel apart. I also don’t like it when books end abruptly with minimal conclusion.

Interesting setting; haunting narrator.

What an intriguing and captivating story. I was surprised at myself as to how much I liked it. 1960 in Arabia, I would have never thought to pick this book up and read it. Such is the wonderfulness of book clubs and how them get me to stretch. The title was so perfect, the story reflecting how our world in the 1960s was determined by men and women had so little influence. Truly an interesting and good read.

This was a solid and enjoyable story of a young woman's moral education in Saudi Arabia in 1967. The swirl of civil rights type issues and the cultural backdrop, as well as the artistic growth of the narrator makes me think of this like a "Saudi Arabian The Help," but I'll admit I know The Help more as a cultural phenom than as a book or movie.

I found this to be a well-plotted, well-written book. The writing in the "difficult" first chapter is lyric and well-suited to the purpose of helping to set up the story, and then recedes as we get into more narrative sections and the writing is less showy. Ideas swirl and coalesce and for the most part come together in satisfying ways. It's good stuff, and Barnes is mostly successful at keeping her narrator close to the center of the action at the climax, even though by her gender she is necessarily a bit off the center.

There are moments of some overreach, I thought: some of the conversations at the end, like the conversation between the narrator and Yash about women, arabs, and colonial subjects is maybe a little on the nose, and Abdullah's family moving the tent near the climax was a little convenient. I didn't think so much of the epilogue, either. But there was an awful lot in this book that I really liked.

Just a smashing good read. This book surprised me--in all good ways--and I've seldom seen landscape, interiority, and meaningful action handled so deftly in the same text. Barnes does marvelous things here. I could listen to Gin McPhee forever.

Faily interesting book about the oil boom of the 60s & 70s in Saudi Arabia. Characters transformation was not exactly believable. from poor school girl to writer to photographer, but enjoyed anyway. Poor ending.

From The Book Wheel:

In the Kingdom of Men was both fantastic and disappointing all at the same time. It was fantastic because the story was great, the characters (mostly) real, and the premise wonderful. It was disappointing because  the advertised portion of the book was such a minute detail that I felt a little bit shafted.

I have no doubt that Kim Barnes is a talented writer and I was very much caught up in this story about a poor girl who is dragged from the drudgery of her everyday life and into the arms of a star athlete at the local high school. Together, Gin and Mason flee their hometown in Oklahoma in search of bigger and greater things until they arrive in Saudi Arabia, where Mason gains employment with an oil company. Unfortunately, the job requires more time away than at home, and their marriage naturally suffers.



Set in the late 1960′s, Gin battles what many housewives at the time fought against: boredom. Only for Gin, the boredom was worse because she was confined to a compound in a country that required women to take the veil and remain indoors. Rebelling against the rules and finally coming into her own, Gin ignores general decorum and befriends the house boy, leaves the compound, and even wears a bathing suit! Meanwhile, Mason defies the norm by advocating for workers rights and trying to uncover the mystery behind his predecessor’s abrupt departure.

For the full review, click here.