Betool Khedairi

The second book in my “Around the World for a Good Book” series represents contemporary fiction of Iraq. Sadly, it is the most self-important piece of crap I’ve read since Leaving Tabasco. Is there some reason I can’t sympathize with first-person tales of woe by women of different cultures? The first half of the book is dedicated to the narrator’s father, and is irritatingly written in a second person voice as if she is writing a letter or praying to her father. There are some nice vignettes that illustrate childhood and living in-between two cultures, but mostly it’s mediocre. Unfortunately, the second half is worse as the narrator switches to dealing with her mother, now writing in first person as the time scale speeds up rapidly. In a few short chapters the author contends with the Iran war, dance lessons, loving an artist / soldier, fleeing to England, and maudlin dealings with her mother’s breast cancer. Somewhere out there, an Iraqi or Iraqi ex-pat has written exemplary contemporary literature. This isn’t it.… (mere)