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
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
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
