With annotations that make it especially useful for educational purposes and young readers, a welcome and human glimpse into...
American author Marston (Women of the Middle East: Tradition and Change, 2003, etc.) offers five intimate tales about life in Middle East countries from the perspective of the young.
The characters here are drawn from different classes of an Arab society mired in stasis, conservatism, and patriarchy. In “In Line,” set in Egypt, the privileged new girl in town, Rania, from a family of government workers who hold themselves above the peasants, longs to befriend Fayza, the smartest student in school but from a lower class. Allowed once to lunch at Fayza’s farm, Rania is enchanted by the farm chores and by the meal eaten on the floor, yet her parents are horrified by the mud on her clothes and Rania’s infraction of skating in public with Fayza’s older brother. In “The Hand of Fatima,” a Syrian maid working in Lebanon arranges for her father to join her, then faces an arranged marriage only slightly sweetened by the gold charm her father is able to buy her as bribe or dowry. “Faces” describes an adolescent Damascan boy’s awkward but well-meaning attempt to make dinner for his beleaguered mother, dumped by his father for another woman, while “Santa Claus in Baghdad” follows the impoverishing effects of the Gulf War on a family who can no longer afford even the basic necessities—such as the bounty of drugstore items Uncle Omar brings from America. “The Plan” is a sweet story from a Palestinian refugee camp about a young boy’s attempt to hook up his unemployed peddler brother with his lovely new art teacher. After each vignette, Marston presents an Author’s Note detailing social and political factors that may have been touched on—like the fact that after divorces in Islamic countries, the father traditionally takes the children, or that gold jewelry for women is a form of insurance when marriage fails.
With annotations that make it especially useful for educational purposes and young readers, a welcome and human glimpse into an often misunderstood culture.Pub Date: April 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-8076-1551-X
Page Count: 146
Publisher: Braziller
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2005
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s...
The traumatic homecoming of a wounded warrior.
The daughter of alcoholics who left her orphaned at 17, Jolene “Jo” Zarkades found her first stable family in the military: She’s served over two decades, first in the army, later with the National Guard. A helicopter pilot stationed near Seattle, Jo copes as competently at home, raising two daughters, Betsy and Lulu, while trying to dismiss her husband Michael’s increasing emotional distance. Jo’s mettle is sorely tested when Michael informs her flatly that he no longer loves her. Four-year-old Lulu clamors for attention while preteen Betsy, mean-girl-in-training, dismisses as dweeby her former best friend, Seth, son of Jo’s confidante and fellow pilot, Tami. Amid these challenges comes the ultimate one: Jo and Tami are deployed to Iraq. Michael, with the help of his mother, has to take over the household duties, and he rapidly learns that parenting is much harder than his wife made it look. As Michael prepares to defend a PTSD-afflicted veteran charged with Murder I for killing his wife during a dissociative blackout, he begins to understand what Jolene is facing and to revisit his true feelings for her. When her helicopter is shot down under insurgent fire, Jo rescues Tami from the wreck, but a young crewman is killed. Tami remains in a coma and Jo, whose leg has been amputated, returns home to a difficult rehabilitation on several fronts. Her nightmares in which she relives the crash and other horrors she witnessed, and her pain, have turned Jo into a person her daughters now fear (which in the case of bratty Betsy may not be such a bad thing). Jo can't forgive Michael for his rash words. Worse, she is beginning to remind Michael more and more of his homicide client. Characterization can be cursory: Michael’s earlier callousness, left largely unexplained, undercuts the pathos of his later change of heart.
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s aftermath.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-57720-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
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