Not Without My Daughterby Betty Mahmoody
Un-put-down-able. I'm very tempted to check out the movie but I just don't think I can stand going through the agony again. I knew the ending--I won't mention it here but it's hard not to know--but still I couldn't stop reading. My lunch breaks (and morning and afternoon breaks) were stretched past the limit of what I could excuse. In days past I'd have read all four-hundred twenty pages in a single sitting, but my sitter-downer isn't what it used to be.
It's really depressing to read about schoolchildren undergoing a daily brainwashing of anti-American propaganda. This occurred during the Iran-Iraq war but it's probably still going on. The only encouragement you can take is that a similar thing was happening in Japan before World War II and in the U.S. during it--we both got over it. Maybe, possibly, they will too. But I don't think it will happen on my watch.
One warning--if you decide to read this book based on my recommendation, be aware that the writers used a silly ploy to try to build suspense or something--I don't know what they were thinking, but it was as annoying as heck. Two or three times they interrupt the narrative to hint at some huge mystery of "Why did she take her daughter there to begin with?" When they finally got to the answer, it was pretty obvious; not the big revealing revelation they intended it to be. So why not just tell us up front instead of annoying us to death?
No comments:
Post a Comment