The narrator of Always Coca-Cola, Abeer Ward (fragrant rose, in Arabic), daughter of a conservative family, admits wryly that her name is also the name of her father's flower shop. Abeer's bedroom window is filled by a view of a Coca-Cola sign featuring the image of her sexually adventurous friend, Jana. From the novel's opening paragraph-"When my mother was pregnant with me, she had only one craving. That craving was for Coca-Cola"-first-time novelist Alexandra Chreiteh asks us to see, with wonder, humor, and dismay, how inextricably confused naming and desire, identity and branding are. The names-and the novel's edgy, cynical humor-might be recognizable across languages, but Chreiteh's novel is first and foremost an exploration of a specific Lebanese milieu. Critics in Lebanon have called the novel "an electric shock."
