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
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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