30 of 36 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
I wish I had liked it, February 14, 2007
I fell in love with "Reading Lolita in Tehran" and nearly ran to Powell's to buy this book when I heard an NPR interview with the author. I thought to myself, "fantastic! someone torn between both cultures that can provide insights into the US and Iran as an insider and an outsider!" Right?
I read over the first few pages, standing in the bookstore aisle, and thought to myself, "perhaps this matter-of-fact style will transform to a narrative style in subsequent chapters" and bought the book for $24.99. It didn't. Every major event in this book is framed in the most simplistic terms, often without explanation. It's almost as though the author has a grocery list that she's checking off next to her computer as she's typing. "I returned Iran. I married a strange man. It was different. Life was good. I cooked chicken. He didn't believe I could cook chicken. I had a baby. Then, life wasn't so good. Then, we moved to America. I had another baby. Things were okay in America. Then, my husband left." Obviously, this is a gross exaggeration, but I couldn't agree more with the New York Times opinion:
"By turns fascinating and frustrating, Ms. Ardalan's memoir is a case study of a book in desperate need of an editor. While compelling portraits of relatives are left curiously truncated and incomplete, the volume is padded with clumsily written, New Agey asides that should have been left on the cutting-room floor."
Where are the editors? Who published this book? There is a lovely story lurking somewhere beneath the awkward writing. The lack of editing is criminal.
The story, however, was quite engaging. Initially, I picked up this book with great anticipation. By the third or fourth sitting, I began to dread the simplistic prose and mockingly read aloud particularly poor passages to my husband. The story barely kept me engaged through the end. Because I empathize with the author, I'm hesitant to blame her here. I think she has a fascinating life and could have written a terribly interesting book.
Sooo, caveat lector, it's a good story, but poorly, poorly written. I'd be interested to see if the publisher couldn't completely republish the book. Does this ever happen?
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Vanity Book, October 12, 2007
This book is poorly edited, and not very effective. The author's story is not that fantastic that it can stand on it's own, and as a producer for NPR, she's just not that interesting. She spends so much time tip toeing around anything that might cast her family in a bad light, that the book feels half baked.
Yes, she went back and forth from Iran a couple of times and had a couple of bad marriages, but so what? She should have written the book about any single one of her ancestors, each of which had a more interesting life than she did.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
average, March 26, 2008
This review is from: My Name Is Iran: A Memoir (Paperback)
Iran has a story to tell, story of a young woman coming to understand who she is and within that context I appreciated the book. I did not care for her need to name drop on so much of the book to establish her identity. At some point in the book Iran feels the need to mention that the grand father of the neighbor of her niece was someone important in US Navy and somehow unsuccessfully she tries to establish a link from there to her present partner. Some of these kinds of name dropping and her need to mention them seem completely out of place and takes away from her story. Over all it is an average book.
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