I probably would have never picked up a book by Dina Rubina on my own. Nothing personal, it just didn’t seem interesting. But my wife read it and insisted that I absolutely had to read The White Dove of Cordoba—that I would definitely enjoy it.
The most interesting part is that, overall, I did like it. But as I read, my opinion of the book swung wildly between “really enjoying this” and “this feels like some kind of women’s fiction.” At first, the latter impression was winning out.
The narrative jumps between the present day and the story of the main character, Zakhar Cordovin, his family, childhood, and coming of age. And it’s the modern-day sections of the novel that are the least engaging—they felt the most “feminine” to me. I was especially annoyed by the courtship and sexual scenes. You can just tell that a woman is trying to convey a man’s feelings, and I kept wanting to skip those parts.
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