Lighter in subject matter than her previous work, Satrapi keeps things semicomical, even when relating matters of severe...
Let’s talk about sex . . . and the disappointments of men.
In her previous pair of graphic novels (Persepolis, 2003 and 2004, whose acclaim helped to heighten the recent push to further legitimize an always somewhat maligned field), the young author told the autobiographical story of her unsuccessful life in Europe before being forced to return to her native Iran, and the culture clash that ensued. This time, Satrapi keeps to her earlier themes of autobiography, Iranian womanhood and its conflicts within a traditional society being encroached on by Western ideas, while providing a somewhat lighter framework. Structured more as a casual conversation, a coffee klatch among the girls, Satrapi eavesdrops on her grandmother and relatives and friends as they talk about being women and, more specifically, about men. It’s refreshingly surprising from the get-go, as Satrapi introduces her grandmother as an elegantly made-up grande dame, an old woman who just happens to be a lifelong opium addict and who encourages Satrapi to close her eyes more—all in order to have a drugged look that would be seductive for men. Placed in charge of the all-important samovar, Satrapi listens as the women sip their tea and talk, because as her grandmother says, “to speak behind others’ backs is the ventilator of the heart.” In these anecdotes, men are uniformly imbecilic, or simply clueless, as witnessed by the story of the non-virginal woman who took the grandmother’s advice and, on her honeymoon night, placed a razor blade between her thighs so that her husband would think he’d broken her hymen. Things didn’t go well. More laughs are to be had, though often bittersweet, in the other tales in which women find themselves stuck between a patriarchal tradition and the desire for love and freedom, though nothing is made out to be quite so simple as that.
Lighter in subject matter than her previous work, Satrapi keeps things semicomical, even when relating matters of severe heartbreak, and her dashed-off drawings (with their slightly childlike expressions) help matters along.Pub Date: April 19, 2005
ISBN: 0-375-42305-2
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2005
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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