"Not without my daughter" by Betty Mahmoody with William Hoffer

Betty Mahmoody was married to an Iranian doctor who was practicing medicine in the United States. They went to visit his family in Tehran, Iran in 1984, just six years after the Shah of Iran had been overthrown by revolution and Iran had become an Islamic theocracy, with an Islamic cleric at its head who oversees the President and Parliament to ensure that the government is operating in accordance with Islamic law. 

Toward the end of their two week visit, Betty’s husband Sayyed informed her they would be staying in Iran.  The rest of the book chronicles Betty’s resistance to this decision and her struggle to find a way to leave Iran with her daughter, Mahtob, who was four years old at the time.

The book did well in this country but sold particularly well in Europe, where cross-cultural marriages are more common, and where conflicts regarding individual rights can surface.  Betty soon found out that under Islamic law, she was an Iranian citizen by marrying an Iranian, and her husband had control over her and their child. 

The book is fairly long but realistic, as over the 18 months before Betty and Mahtob’s escape, we see Betty trying different tactics and succumbing at times to depression, despair and even apathy.  Her husband keeps her a virtual prisoner, beats her and for a time even keeps her from being with her daughter.

A film was made of the book, which was criticized for being anti-Iranian.  You do see the culture from Betty’s eyes, and she finds some habits of Iranian housewives lacking in hygiene, although it is not clear that this is widespread.  She does find friends and helpers, both Iranian and foreign. 

Sayyed Mahmoody died in 2009, never seeing his daughter again, who refused any contact with him.  He documented his side of the story with a book and with a video made with Finnish journalists.  He denied that he had been abusive towards Betty and maintained that she had agreed to move to Iran, so that he, as a doctor, could give medical help during the Iran-Iraqi war. 

Betty Mahmoody has received a lot of thanks from abused women who found similarities in their situations to hers, although they were not in a foreign country as she was.  It’s a book to make you think about marriage and people’s expectations of marriage, regardless of what culture they live in.

The book is listed here in our catalog. 

Wild: from lost to found on the Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed

Cheryl Strayed hiked eleven hundred miles of the Pacific Coast Trail, through California and into Oregon, at age 26, by herself, with no experience of hiking or backpacking.  Cheryl is now 43, and she says in a book trailer that everything she is now is what she “gathered back to herself” on that trip.  Raised by a loving mom and an abusive father (who the mother finally leaves), Cheryl and her two siblings knew what it was like to live on the edge, as their mom did what jobs she could and moved them around to keep their family intact.  Mom didn’t always have it together.  Cheryl relates how she sometimes left them alone without a sitter, and spent a period smoking marijuana right in front of them.  

Her mother had a desire to be something to discover herself, but found in her short life that she had all she could do was to take care of her family.  Finally meeting a great guy, he’s a loving second father to the kids but falls off a roof and is a long while recovering.  To put it succinctly, Cheryl and her siblings had their share of trauma and hardship.  Then Mom dies of cancer, at age 46.  Four years later Cheryl is on the trail. She’s racked up a move towards heroin (which her ex-husband helps get her out of) a tendency toward having sex with other men (which destroyed her marriage) so that she is pretty down when she begins her trek.

What is amazing about all of this is that yes, she can write, and she tells her story well.  Some of her agony, from a too-heavy backpack (that she uses as a metaphor) and too-small hiking books, might have been avoided, if she had prepared better.  What we like in these narratives, what we are interested in, is the stripping down to essentials.  What will you eat, what will you wear, what will you encounter today?   Her grief about her mom is real, and she evokes that in an encounter with a fox.  She’s sitting and the fox comes close, unaware of her and suddenly seeing her, scenting her.  Scared and wanting to say something, she speaks to him gently and he looks and then leaves, and she calls him to come back and then finds herself calling out “Mom! Mom! Mom!”  You can see that that kind of loss is always there, just waiting to be triggered - by a look, by an awareness of life, just in front of you and yet beyond you.

There is no real resolution, no grand epiphany to be passed on.  Just the walking of the trail, just Cheryl centering herself through the trek.  And although nothing special happens, maybe something does, something I can't put my finger on.  She does get her life back.

Cemetery Girl / by David Bell

"Let me tell you something about my daughter."

The day Tom Stuart's daughter disappeared is what he replays most in his mind. 12-year-old Caitlin had taken the dog for a walk, something Tom and wife Abby had agreed was a good responsibility/privilege, and hadn't come back. What unfolded in the following days, weeks, months and eventually years was a classic suburban disaster story. Frantic searches amped up by media coverage and community panic gave way to fruitless leads followed by inconsequential suspects and an ultimate withdrawal of investigators from the case. The grieving couple's marriage then began to dissolve, Abby thinking it time to move on and Tom not ready to give up hope. After four years, Abby does move on, organizing a memorial service to declare Caitlin legally dead, even giving her a burial plot; Tom doesn't even attend for much of the ceremony and Abby starts to move out of the house later that day. But then, only a little while later and nearly at random, Caitlin's found--alive. Discovered by police after some new information surfaces, a teenage Caitlin reappears, disheveled and malnourished, but breathing and at least physically alright.

The miracle isn't quite as luminous as Tom envisioned. His daughter is home and safe and, at least for the time being, the family is back together, but the situation is far from stable. Caitlin isn't talking. It's not as if she's incoherent or uncommunicative, she's just not saying what happened, even requesting a stay of questions concerning all that's gone on. And though Tom still can hardly fathom that his daughter might've actually have been a runaway rather than a kidnapping victim, the thought lingers, becoming, while not quite the whole truth, a notion intermingled with what actually went down. To say the least, his daughter's disappearance, time away and awkward reappearance has done Tom's own well-being no favors. His psyche's shot, his mind plays tricks on him (Or does it?). He may be seeing things that aren't really there and the reckless way he's gone about trying to find answers--both before and after Caitlin's return--has only served to alienate his wife, discredit his convictions and complicate his relationships with the law enforcement officials who are still searching for "the guy", the man his daughter won't tell him about and the one person ("a bastard to be sure") who holds the key to everything.

Perhaps if it weren't for the cover which lends this book a less original flavor, giving it more of a YA feel, Cemetery Girl could've taken off at a level similar to Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones, In the Woods by Tana French or even an earlier Stephen King. And even though the novel and its author have gotten their due credit from the people who truly matter, the book is a still something of an underground phenomenon, not quite mainstream. The praise is certainly warranted. It's not just the story--a taut blend of well-conceived realism and subtly imbedded cliffhangers--that pushes things forward, climax to climax, revelation by revelation, but the densely layered psychological adventure steadily creeping toward a crescendo. Tom Stuart lost something he will never get back, even when he does technically get back the thing that he lost. Nothing seems to satisfy the deepest ache of his soul, a soul still tormented by an under-nurtured past and unsettled family history. Even finding a solid lead, his child, then the perpetrator, and ultimately justice can't quiet his desire for the truth of why his daughter may have preferred another life. This can portray him as not an all-the-way likeable character; easy to identify with, but not totally sympathetic. As the ultimate pitiable victim, a parent who's lost a child, he doesn't earn a lot of brownie points for the way he brazenly points the finger (about more than one thing), first at the police, then his wife, his half-brother, the kidnapper . . . going the whole round before finally getting to himself. Nor is he shy about acting on impulse and taking the law into his own hands. But can you blame him? Bell thinks that maybe you can, to a degree. It's a hard sell, to be sure, this re-fabrication of natural reactions of a parent to their own child's kidnapping. But it's the key to the story's true success, almost a de-victimization of the injured party whereby a heinous, truly abominable injustice wrought on an undeserving family, heaped on top of which is the maddening reluctance of those in charge and the dissolution of a marriage, is twisted around in thoroughly believable fashion, creating a story about the tenuous balance between paternal love and obsessive control all tied up within a damaged, driven man. (FIC BELL)

The Language of Flowers / by Vanessa Diffenbaugh

Life hasn't been all roses for Victoria Jones. Dumped at an orphanage by her birth mother, she's bounced around the foster care system her where she's learned to live hard and act tough. Though never much good at school and certainly not one to get along well with others, there is one thing Victoria has become very, very good at--flowers. A fascination born from spending years alone outdoors, Victoria self-educated herself on the world of flora, having learned by heart all of the different kinds of bulbous, long-stemmed and pollen carrying as well as learning to distinguish even the slightest differences between everything from geraniums to snapdragons and azaleas to tulips, even maintaining a slapshod garden of potted plants out of halved milk gallon containers. Now at the point of "aging out" on her eighteenth birthday, Victoria's more or less relegated to a life on the street where she's taken living (and gardening) in the city park. By chance when she aids a woman loading boxes of plants into her car, Victoria maneuvers her way into a job as an assistant florist where her gifts and most importantly her passions are put to good use.

A great novel about the beauty of nature offsetting the harshness of humanity, The Language of Flowers explores the importance of having a place and the significance of relationships within the families we make for ourselves. Victoria's not an especially secure person when she's first introduced, very much the tormented soul. It's not hard to see why as the narrative toggles back and forth between Victoria's life as a new adult and her girlhood a decade earlier. And yet the story may be that much more poetic for it. As Victoria learns from her boss the "language of flowers", how certain types of flowers can communicate various emotions from giver to receiver, she steadily begins to find her own place in the world. (FIC DIFFENBA)

Today is International Literacy Day

International Literacy Day falls on Sept. 8 every year. According to the International Reading Association, the day is intended to renew the commitment of literacy professionals and leaders to those in the world who lack hope and opportunity because of their lack of education, including — and these numbers will bowl you over — "an estimated 860 million adults (two thirds of whom are women) who cannot read or write and more that 100 million children, again the majority female, who lack access to school." (My emphasis, the association's words.)

The event gained prominence in 1966, when the World Conference of Ministers of Education on the Eradication of Illiteracy took place in Tehran, Iran, beginning on Sept. 8. The following year, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) proclaimed the date International Literacy Day kicked off the event's first official observance.

Some interesting literacy statistics collected by the International Reading Association:

Globally

• The per capita income in countries with a literacy rate less than 55% averages about $600.
• Teaching mothers to read can lead to a decrease in infant mortality of up to 50%.
• 98% of all non-literates live in developing countries.
• 52% of all non-literates live in India and China.
• Africa as a continent has a literacy rate of less than 60%.
• In all developing countries, the percentage of children aged 6-11 not attending school is 15%. In the least developed countries, it is 45%.

In the U.S.

• According to the U.S. Census Bureau, workers 18 and over with a bachelor's degree earn an average of $51,206 a year, while those with a high school diploma earn $27,915; those without a high school diploma average $18,734.
• American business currently spends more than $60 billion each year on employee training, much of that for remedial reading, writing, and mathematics.
• Annual health care costs in the U.S. are four times higher for individuals with low literacy skills than they are for individuals with high level literacy skills.
• Women in the U.S. who have little formal education are more likely than educated women to be in abusive relationships.
• One-half of all adults in U.S. federal and state correctional institutions cannot read or write at all; 85% of juvenile offenders have reading problems.

Breath, Eyes, Memory by Edwidge Danticat

Published as her first novel in 1994 when the author was 25 years old, this book received immensely favorable reviews. Many reviewers and readers were ready to nominate Danticat as the new spokeswoman for Haitian immigrants, so many of them since the late 1950’s that they are called the Haitian Diaspora.

I picked up this book, the first I have read of Danticat’s, with the expectation that I would learn something about Haiti, and also something about the experience of being an immigrant. Edwidge Danticat was born in Haiti, and her parents left her and her younger brother when she was only 4 years old to go to the United States. Her parents had expected to send for them right away, but difficulties and red tape extended the separation so that Edwidge was 12 years old when she finally joined her parents in New York City. The young girl in Breath, Eyes, Memory has a similar experience, living many years with her aunt in Haiti until her mother finally sends for her from New York.

There the similarity ends – for Sophie, the girl in the book, has a mother but no father. Her father was a thug – probably a Tonton Macoute, the rural militia group that dictator Francois Duvalier cultivated as his strong arm, who raped, robbed and brutalized citizens for their own pleasure and personal gain. This man raped her mother, Martine, pushing her down in a cane field until he had pounded out his purpose on her and in her. She could not see his face, as he wore a mask, but his likeness seems to be borne by Sophie, who doesn’t resemble her mother’s family.

Danticat wants to write about the distancing that takes place when families separate across continents, with oceans between them, and about the ways they try to gather up their strings of attachment and reconnect with each other. Martine, the mother, has never “processed” her rape and has been suicidal since that time, with ever recurrent nightmares of the event, even after twenty years. In a stance that Danticat presents as Haitian, Martine overly protects Sophie as she matures, not letting her out of the house except to go to school. You have to wonder how Sophie manages to grow up with no friends, living in a world peopled only by her mother and Marc, Martine’s Haitian-American gentleman friend, who is wealthy and helps Martine, but at a distance. Martine’s need to guard and protect her daughter paradoxically ends up in tearing them apart.

How much is this book about Haiti? Some readers have embraced Danticat’s writing as a much-needed voice for female pain and suffering, particularly the rape and humiliation present in countries undergoing post-colonial unrest and upheavals. But Danticat is also witnessing regarding cruel tradition passed on from mother to daughter, in this case mothers’ “testing” their daughters, making sure their virginity is intact. Haiti’s women are strong, but traditionally the culture is one where men are valued over women, and the woman’s offering of herself – her body – is her principal worth. Immigration has given Martine, and, by extension, Sophie a new life, but as Danticat writes: “There is always a place where nightmares are passed on through generations like heirlooms.” In this first novel, Danticat evokes such nightmares effectively, but her characters are not strong enough to dispel them. Sophie’s catharsis regarding her mother’s pain is willed by Danticat, but that kind of liberation is not picked up so easily – not by phrase and not by ritual acts, such as Sophie pounding the stalks of cane at the story's end.

The Gravedigger's Daughter / by Joyce Carol Oates

By the time Joyce Carol Oates graduated from Syracuse as valedictorian in 1960, she'd already won several short story contests and was well on her way to becoming one of most prolific fiction authors in American literary history. Her 1969 book them, focusing on the downtrodden lives of an extended family of lower-class midwesterners, won the National Book Award and three of her novels in the last two decades have been nominated for Pulitzers. The sheer volume of her published works and seemingly irrepressible stream of assorted literature (adult and YA novels, short stories, plays, poetry, essays, criticisms, etc., all in addition to teaching at Princeton) is something of a phenomenon on par with writers like Danielle Steel and Stephen King. 2007's The Gravedigger's Daughter vaguely references the life of Oates' own grandmother tracing the life of an abused woman, the daughter of German immigrants, through the travails of mid-century American life. .

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In 1959, Rebecca Tignor is a young wife and mother living in upstate New York where in addition to her homemaking duties, she works in a tubing factory. Despite the fact that she lives reasonably well and loves her husband Niles and son Niles Jr., Rebecca is a bit of an unfortunate soul. Her husband Niles, a traveling salesman gone most of the time, wilfully cheats on her readily expecting his carousing and fornication to be overlooked as "just a part of who he is". Plus her job keeps her away from her still small child much of the day. There's a deeper resonance to her grief though. The child of German immigrants who gave birth to her during the actual crossing, Rebecca's life as the only daughter of Jacob Schwart, once a school teacher and budding intellectual turned gravedigger and cemetery caretaker, was not an easy one. In fact it was downright cruel and horrific. At 13, after a particularly bad experience in which he'd been brutally made the scapegoat of Nazi German atrocities in WWII, Jacob Schwart killed his wife Hannah (Rebecca's mother) before turning the gun on himself. The ghastly murder-suicide, personally witnessed by Rebecca, has followed her everywhere.
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But then an odd incident in which she's mistaken for another woman suddenly changes her destiny. Dismissing it initially as just another coincidence, Rebecca rethinks her options after nearly being killed herself during a violent argument with her husband. Abruptly taking on the identity of the woman called Hazel Jones, Rebecca and her son (renamed Zacharias) carve out a new path, leaving their New York home altogether and setting out on the road where she takes on odd jobs periodically all the while maintaining the identity of Hazel. But just when she thinks she's escaped her afflicted world of violence and abuse, reinvented herself inside a new persona and claimed a more prosperous livelihood, Rebecca finds the past catching up with her all over again.
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The Gravedigger's Daughter is not a very happy story. Not a whole lot of Oates' fiction is. Beginning way before Rebecca's birth, we're shown the oppressive circumstances leading to the Schwart family's escape from Germany, far from welcoming arrival in America and perpetually bleak circumstances within a world removed from the war overseas yet self-destructing all the same. Jacob Schwart is a very, very angry man; and not without reason though it could be argued he's a bit too self-absorbed and ill-equipped as a father. A once-proud, self-made individual brought down in the world both physically and emotionally, he soon cracks under the severe humiliation as an unwanted outsider, a breakdown causing him to turn his wrath on those closest to him--his family--ultimately begetting a legacy of violence and abandonment to his daughter. Oates is very good at integrating the two stories, narrating both Rebecca's flight from her home with intermittent flashbacks to her torrid youth and also the plight of the Schwart family, their seemingly cursed situation, acute instances of harassment and the near disintegration of their entire lineage. (FIC OATES)

Daniel Deronda / by George Eliot

Born to unknown parentage, Daniel Deronda has been raised by respected gentleman Sir Hugo Mallinger since infancy. Now a grown man, Dan's a well-educated, well-traveled and well-groomed proper Victorian gentleman. Yet not all's quite right; intuition tells him he needs to re-examine his life from a root perspective, to pursue a more philosophical mode of existence. And so, after a series of circumstances in which he rescues a young woman, a Jewess, from the river, Deronda begins a twisting, soul-searching journey, one leading him down an unforeseen path of enlightenment and self-revelation.

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Meanwhile not far away, Gwendolen Harleth is a beautiful, adventurous young girl from a middle class family. Well-versed and privy to the fact that she's a desirous prospect among men, Gwendolen has the role of the minxish coquette down pat and though discrete to the proper degree, sees no reason she shouldn't enjoy her life to the fullest. But when her father dies, leaving her mother widowed with limited assets, the family is forced to move in with relatives, a situation obliging Gwendolen to "marry up", thus providing financial leverage for herself and her family. Wealthy neighborhood bachelor Henleigh Grancourt seems a timely match for Gwendolen. The nephew of Sir Hugo Mallinger and heir to a vast fortune, he's well-regarded and can provide the type of life Gwendolen feels she deserves. But things change quickly as, after the wedding, Gwendolen finds Grancourt to be a cruel, emotionally abusive man who's already fathered several children with a previous mistress, a woman he'd previously promised to marry. Now trapped in a fate she never could have anticipated, Gwendolen foresees a bleak, foreboding future as her life becomes one of relentless, daily misery.

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Eliot's final completed novel, published just before her death in 1880, was also her only book set in contemporary Victorian society; her others usually dated back a generation or two previous. As well as rendering themes associated with ethical soul searching, the perils of marriage and conflicting intellectual paradigms, the story is notable as an early reference to Jewish mysticism, namely its associations with Kabbalah and proto-Zionism. Deronda's introspective quest for personal truth contrasts well to Gwendolen's egotistical, self-seeking nature and the pair's ironical relationship and correlating problems elicit a clever nuance. This complementary dichotomy of characters was a signature literary device Eliot had used previously in Middlemarch and Adam Bede and an arrangement which Tolstoy and others would similarly incorporate into their own work. (FIC ELIOT)

Beautiful Lies / by Lisa Unger

Connecticut native Lisa Unger has lived in the Netherlands, England and New Jersey and had a high-profile career in publicity prior to becoming a full-time author. Her 2007 crime novel Beautiful Lies was selected as an International Book of the Month and was a finalist for "Best Novel" among the International Thriller Writers Organization.

New York City freelance writer Ridley Jones becomes famous one day after rescuing a toddler who suddenly wanders out into a busy intersection. The publicity from her daring act has some quirky after-effects though as, soon afterwards, she receives an old photo of a man, an oddly familiar-looking woman and a young girl. Accompanying the photo is a note with the words "Are you my daughter?". Understandably puzzled, Ridley speaks to her parents who eagerly affirm she is in fact their rightful daughter by birth. Still uncertain and needing confirmation, Ridley, along with her new boyfriend Jake tries to track down the source of the strange letter, uncovering some remarkable details and shocking secrets in the process.

Between Ridley and Jake, things swiftly and compellingly escalate as aspects of Ridley's life become a swirl of treachery, betrayal and lies. Her family (parents in particular) are definitely hiding something; her path to the truth seems to become more obstructed at every turn. Finally it's her somewhat estranged Uncle Max, a real estate mogul turned philanthropist, who turns out to have be the most useful tool in Ridley's now near-desparate search. Ultimately Ridley unveils the truth about her mysterious past, her oddly-situated origins and a world she never new existed. Unger has a knack creating suspense-driven drama intermingled with well-fleshed out characters and intriguing romantic subplots. Readers will also enjoy how she describes the Big Apple, both its dark and shady side as well as its unmistakeable glamour and glitz.