Miles's review of Henna House

5/5: Henna House takes us inside the world of Temani/Yemenite Jewish women, in the 1920s and 1930s... and ultimately into the 1960s in Israel. Nomi Eve tells of their daily lives and struggles, and what it feels like to be inside this now vanished cultural/geographic space in the southern Arabian peninsula. Once I entered this women's world I did not want to leave. The author sometimes weaves a delirious quasi-magical-realist tone when describing the "writing" that women do on each other's bodies for decoration, for pleasure, for marriage, and sometimes even for more devious purposes. In the He...