5 comments about Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood.

1. I first saw the movie and I thought the graphic novel was going to be exactly the same. No, it is much much better! You cannot stop reading it. It goes much deeper into who Marjane was and what Iran meant for her in the different stages of her life. Don't lose the chance of reading such a great book.
   
   Recommended!!!



2. Marjane's memoir of her years in Tehran from ages six to fourteen is a page-turning history of the events she witnesses. Her upper class liberal parents (she is the great-granddaughter of Iran's last emperor) demonstrate against the Shah. They are bitterly disappointed when the new republic is overtaken by the fundamentalist Islamic revolution. Despite the imprisonment and execution of friends and family members, her parents remain in Iran. The war with Iraq brings yet more tragedies. The book ends with her parents sending the fourteen year old Marjane to school in Germany. The author's black and white illustrations enhance the text. Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return continues the story.



3. Satrapi's graphic novel is an inspiration to expressing oneself in a medium other than words. Her illustrations are telling; giving hints of expressions and fabulous drawings that echo woodblock prints. My book club had some trouble transitioning from words to both illustration and words but found the experience worthwhile. We compared Satrapi's experiences to "Reading Lolita in Tehran," and "Infidel." We discovered that the artwork indeed added to the story, and concluded that the "graphic novel" is a legitimate literary form.



4. This books begins my foray into graphic novels. The exact definition of a graphic novel is debatable, but Wikipedia defines it as "a type of comic book, usually with a lengthy and complex storyline similar to those of novels, and often aimed at mature audiences." Technically, this volume is a memoir, as it's the true story of author Marjane Satrapi's growing up in Iran during the Islamic Revolution, told in comic-strip form. I figured, "Finally, a book that won't make me cry," but of course, I was wrong. Maybe I'm just a cry-baby.
   
   Though it took me only a couple of hours to complete, it was mesmerizing. I found it unabashedly forthright and ultimately heartbreaking. I appreciated Satrapi's illustrations which, in their broad-stroked black-and-white simplicity, were a stark, yet appropriate, departure from what most people recognize as that highly anatomical, Batmanesque comic-book style. I look forward to reading the sequel "Persepolis: The Story of a Return," and also highly recommend the Oscar-nominated full-length animated feature film of the same name.



5. In Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi uses the graphic novel format to share her life story with readers. Satrapi grew up in Iran during the years that the Shah lost power and the Fundamentalist Muslims became the government authority.
   
   Satrapi was raised in a modern family that valued education and modern life. Her parents were part of the revolution that forced the Shah from power. They were shocked, however, when the ultra-religous government that took over soon made the freedoms they were used to and expected illegal. No longer could women dress as they pleased; they were instead forced to wear the veil. No longer could the Iranian people travel freely; the borders were closed for over three years, and even when reopened, passports were almost impossible to obtain. No longer could one count on an education; the universities were closed for over two years.
   
   Darker items were to follow. There were 3000 political prisoners under the Shah, but there were 300,000 political prisoners under the new regime. Satrapi's family had both relatives and friends that were imprisoned, tortured and some were even executed. Then the government got involved in a war with Iraqi. Bombings were common, and over a million people were killed.
   
   Satrapi's use of the graphic format is a perfect match to the story of a young girl whose life changes so dramatically and who tries to make sense of the things happening around her with a child's understanding. Satrapi ended up being educated outside of Iran in her teen years and later, and chose a graphic artist's career. This book was a perfect match for her talent, and her memoir is chilling. To see freedoms taken away gradually is difficult, and when one looks up and sees where the normality markers have moved to, it is eye-opening. This book is recommended to all readers who care about world events, and those who enjoy memoirs.

5 comments about The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid: A Memoir.

1. Typical Bill Bryson - exaggerated humor - laugh out loud funny. Book is a kind of tongue-in-cheek remembrance of growing up in Iowa. Very enjoyable reading



2. I read Bill Bryson's "A Walk in the Woods" and laughed so hard I was crying. I was expecting the same with "The Thunderbolt Kid". However, this is more a reminiscence of life in the Midwest in the 1950's. There were a few funny moments in this book but not nearly as many as a "A Walk in the Woods".
   
   If you are a baby boomer and enjoy reading about growing up in that era, then this book will appeal. There are things here that all of us can enjoy if you are like me, a child of the 1950's.
   
   The author uses the book as a tool for rants against the United States in some of the last chapters. He particularly has great unhappiness with Republicans, the CIA, and Nixon among others.
   
   However, if you like to read about the past and remember some of the good times of the era then this is a fun book; it is just not as laugh out loud funny as "A Walk in the Woods". I did enjoy catching up with Bill Bryson's old friend, Stephen Katz, who accompanied him on his walk in the wood on the Applachian Trail. Since it is not quite as funny as the other book, I chose to give this book 3 stars. I like Bryson best when he is making me laugh.



3. If you grew up in the 50's, 60's, 70's, and even the 80's, and you enjoy reading, you simply MUST read this book. I was born in '68, well after Bill Bryson, and most of which he wrote were things that I experienced as a kid. It made me smile, laugh, and even brought a tear to my eye. For some reason, this book is in my top ten of all time. I loved it that much....



4. If you were born in the 1950's as I was you really have to read this book. So much that I have forgotten is brought back to vivid life.
   I got this with my new kindle, it's the first book I have read on it. A word of warning though, it's a real buster. I'm steal laughing.



5. I did not grow up in the US neither did I grow up in the 50s. Nevertheless, the book brought back fond memories of childhood. This is a book more about growing up than anything else. A great read.

5 comments about The Lost Boy: A Foster Child's Search for the Love of a Family.

1. i never have received this order yet even though i paid for faster delevery it has now been over a month and still have not gotten it



2. If you possess even the most minimal of human compassion, your heart will simply wrench while reading this book. I literally had my hands on my head throughout the reading of this book. I cannot imagine how another human being can be so cruel to a child. This will open your eyes to something many of us will never experience, witness, or even imagine. That is what happened to this child: the unimaginable.
   
   This reader strongly recommends this book to anybody who is human. It will certainly make you appreciate what you have.



3. I have been reading and rereading his written words since the 7th grade. Very descriptive and extremly heartfelt.



4. This is child abuse extreme. This will make you cry, rip out your heart and make you want to rip out the mother and father of this child's hearts. It will make you,hopefully, more aware of child abuse and make you want to do something to stop it and prevent this from happening to another child. It will make you hug your child closer to you and thank God you are not like these people.



5. Although not quite as intense as the first book, A Child Called It, still an excellent book. Especially if you've read the first in the series.

5 comments about All Souls: A Family Story from Southie.

1. The book looked like it was a college student text book with highlighting and pen marks. Not good condition.



2. I can`t tell you how the book is yet, because I haven`t started reading it. But a few of my friends & family members have, and said it is a VERY good book. This book was chosen by my son`s school ( High school) for required summer reading. Although he is not interested in reading it at all.
   As far as ordering, delivery & cost, no complants at all.



3. MacDonald's tale of a two-sided city is a compelling and unconventional love story. It is impossible not to become immersed in his story-telling and the world of Southie.
   
   Besides the love for his family, MacDonald relates his love for Southie. And like any relationship, it is complex, deep, and sometimes dysfunctional. He explores what it means to have a sense of place and belonging. As much as Southie is a place of pain for MacDonald, it is also so deeply ingrained in who he is that it is irresistible. I found his relationship and conflict with this city most fascinating.
   
   MacDonald's writing style is straightforward and unadorned. He tells it like it is, which I feel is appropriate for nonfiction, especially with the content he covers. The story-telling is still compelling. I clearly felt the anxiety, panic, and sense of suffocation that he battles with while growing up alongside the violence and depravity of Southie.
   
   MacDonald shows people at their best and worst. It is impossible not to be moved by the losses his family endures, by the strength and charm of his mother, by the manipulation of those in power, many of whom one should be able to trust, and by the long list of lives cut short.
   
   I have deep respect for MacDonald and his mother. They didn't just "get out." They broke the silence that held so many lives hostage, empowering them to feel and speak of their grief and to counteract the violence that reigned far too long as law.
   
   After reading this memoir, I have a new appreciation for the quiet, peaceful view out my front window where kids play safely in the street.



4. It took a week and a half to read through Michael Patrick MacDonald's "All Souls:" a week and three days to read up to the chapter titled "August," and one night to not be able to let go and have to finish a heart wrenching tale of life in Southie. MacDonald has brought Southie to life for those on the outside of that world, putting down to paper his observations of the best and worst that he grew up with in this Boston enclave.
   
   From the "August" chapter forward "All Souls" is unstoppable. This reviewer grew up north of Boston and daily heard the news reports of deaths in Boston's inner city areas. What MacDonald has done with "All Souls" is show that those victims had mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, and friends who loved them and cared about them. Here in the story of MacDonald's growing up in Southie and the unraveling of his family the statistics become names, and the names become flesh and blood people whose time was tragically cut too short.
   
   "All Souls" isn't all heartbreak. The author also fondly recalls growing up in a very tightly-knit community in the 1970s, where kids ran around in groups that kept themselves endlessly self-entertained, not always with the best of activities--dumpster fire anyone?--but always with something to do. His childhood recalls a simpler time that any adult can relate to, a time when the world was seen through largely innocent eyes. An unforgettable memoir.



5. Although I grew up in Brooklyn, this book reminded me of my own childhood in many ways.It was almost like reading a well written account of our own large family,albiet with only a small fraction of the horrible tragedys that this family bravely endured.
   
   Great job Mr.Mc Donald.I really enjoyed it(as well as Easter Rising.) and look foward to your next book.

5 comments about Running with Scissors: A Memoir.

1. Right off the bat I have to say I don't believe this is a memoir. To me, this is fiction. Fiction based on real life events, but fiction nonetheless. That being said, it was a funny, irreverent, absurd book. Its too fantastical to believe but that doesn't mean that the story being told wasn't interesting. This family of complete maniacs was hard to not read about. You wanted to see what insanity they would get into next. The sex scenes involving adults and children were graphic and utterly hard to read. Overall, the book is better as fiction because if its true it makes me feel bad for laughing during the book.



2. Pretty brutal homosexual coming of age, where the age is compassionately on the lower bounds and the backdrop is a symphony of chaos. The Finch family would have been deemed unlikely, had I not personally encountered (and intimately engaged with) a similarly alien family as an exchange student.
   
   I was not impressed, although the book was readable.



3. When I read this book, I was really appalled that people would classify it as a comedy, and that the makers of the film would treat it as such. I thought it was one of the most tragic things I have ever read in my life. The fact that this kid had to deal with not only his crazy parents, but an entirely crazy family is heartbreaking. And it's not just that they're quirky, like everyone seems to make them out to be, but they really are insane. And in the worst possible way. And then he gets totally sexually abused by a thiry year old when he's thirteen, and yet all the reviews I read call it a "relationship." It makes me sick. And he not only had to deal with some really disgusting sexual stuff with that guy, but he walked in on and was a part of some really gross and freaky stuff that everyone else in his life is doing. By the end of it I was hoping all of these people would go to jail or metal institutions, and that all the kids involved in this madness would get some serious psychiatric help and stop listening to their nutso dad. The whole thing just really broke my heart, and it speaks loads about our society that people treat this like a comedy. But I do have to say that it was really well written, and I would classify it as an important book to read to get a view of some of the psycho things going on in this country.



4. It was very difficult for me to believe there was much of any truth in this book even though it stated it was "a memoir".



5. Running with Scissors is the first and most popular of six memoirs by Augusten Burroughs. It garnered so much attention when it came out that they even made a movie out of it. So what's the appeal?
   
   Burroughs is reminiscent of David Sedaris. They both use direct language- often with a high cringe-factor- and acidic wit to bring us intimately and humorously into their childhoods. They can both turn the painful challenges of growing up gay into moments of pure comedy. Some of the scenes in Scissors of Burroughs obsessing over his hair and dreaming of growing up to be a hair care mogul are the funniest and, as it turns out, most innocent scenes in the book.
   
   But there are differences. Scissors, while episodic, reads in a more chronological fashion than Sedaris' collections. It is in a more cohesive format, tying up loose ends, and leaving the reader feeling as if she's read a novel. The second and most critical difference in determining whether or not you'll like Scissors is that Burroughs' childhood makes Sedaris' seem like a picnic in comparison.
   
   The biggest player in that turbulent childhood was Burroughs' mother, a failed writer and occasional psychotic. She never learned to deal with life and after a bitter and violent end to her marriage, turns herself and her son over to a psychiatrist with very unorthodox methods, to say the least. This Dr. Finch, who oozes creepy from the moment he walks on the stage, invites Burroughs and his mother to effectively join their family. As a result, Burroughs spends the majority of his teen years shuttling between the two homes.
   
   At the Finch's, Burroughs finds the household run in the loose and bizarre manner one would expect from a radical psychiatrist who lives his unconventional theories. Six year-old children defecate under pianos, crazy patients sleep in upstairs rooms, people walk around the house naked, feces are consulted to read the future. The children are left to their own devices out of the Dr. Finchs' mis-guided belief that children become adults at thirteen. And the results are predictable: Burroughs quits school, turns to drugs, is taken advantage of. It's not long before our suspicions are confirmed and we learn the Dr Finch is not just bizarre, but much worse. Yet his mother's home isn't much better, as Burroughs never knows when she will flip out, never knows how crazy she will behave or even if she will become violent with him.
   
   Though we know no good can come of any of this (at least not until years later when the victim of this abuse can write a best-selling memoir about it) all of it still makes for great reading. There's endless drama and tension. And Burroughs is funny. He wants you to laugh at the horrors of his childhood. And you might laugh throughout, even at scenes that you can't believe you're laughing at because what is happening is so sad. That's the edge that makes Burroughs so good. Scissors is great because it is a polarizing book: you may find yourself laughing or crying depending on your perspective of life. To enjoy this book, you need to be able to read about child abuse turned into comedy by the victim. We know that child abuse is not funny, but what about when the victim themselves make light of it? If you can join this victim in his laughter, if you can read scenes of child rape and abuse turned into jokes in what I can only believe is a cathartic experience for the victim and author, then you'll probably love this book. If you cannot, pass on this one. You will not be able to stomach it.

5 comments about First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers (P.S.).

1. This is an excellent book to understand what happened between 1975 and 1979 in Cambodia, facts being narrated in first person and through the eyes of a 5 years old child who actually lived the trauma and tragedy of the Khmer rouge holocaust. This is not a manual of history so the reader at the end will not have a full grasp of the poltical and military events but only the perceptions of them filtered through the eyes of the author. It would be best to approach this book already having read some history regarding that national tragedy but it is not strictly necessary because the personal experience of the author makes sufficiently clear what happened in Cambodia in those years, because her experience was the experience of an entire people.
   My only criticism goes to the fact that the author does not give any credits to her saviours, who were christian organizations and western NGOs that allowed thousand of cambodians to leave the country and literally build new lives in the US. This lack or gratitude at the end left me quite sorry.
   
   An interesting book to understand incredibly tragic events.



2. This book reminds us all of how quickly the comfortable lives we have could be turned upside down as the author describes the overnight change from a middle class city dweller to a homeless nomad wandering the countryside and constantly scavenging for food. Despite the harrowing descriptions of the unimaginable horrors that the young author encountered, including the loss of her parents to the Pol Pot killing machine, it is also a testament to the human spirit and its ability to survive.
   
   A compelling, although disturbing read.



3. I'm not going to go as far as other reviewers and say that Ung has lied, but I think there are some legitimate questions as to how much is memory based and how much is the adult Ung reflecting back on certain events and thinking about them within the context of what she now understands. Certainly human beings have the ability to remember things at a fairly young age. But for example, when she steals the food from her family is she truly cognoscente as a young girl that her actions may lead to the Gaek's starvation or was she just hungry and willing to do anything to survive?
   
   Getting to the book itself, I do not expect every genocide book to be the latest Stephen King or Tom Clancy, but the pacing in this book was very slow and deliberate. This approach can be useful when describing specific game changing episodes, but through most of a 288 page book it can get boring and tiresome. It does kind of pick up after she is taken to the soldier camp and separated/than reunited with her sister, but that's at the tale end of the book when the reader has already plodded through 180-200 pages of prose. On the good side, it does give the reader a chance to put themselves in the narrators shoes and ask thoughtful questions like : would I steal food meant for my family to survive or how would I survive if I was trapped in genocidal hell?



4. this was an amazing read. a personalized account of life under the Khmer Rouge, told through the eyes of a child. this first person approach sets this book apart from other genocide specific material such as the excellent "We Wish to Inform You that Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families: Stories From Rwanda". Both books are excellent in their own way, and will allow you to immerse yourselves in the struggle of people against hate and desperation. we should all learn from this.



5. The story of Loung Ung's family and the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia is gripping, and her gift for storytelling is apparent from the beginning. In the opening chapters she introduces us to her family, and we know each of her siblings and her parents so that they are not simply characters but flesh-and-blood people. I also found Ung's style to be at times especially poignant because of its self-effacing tone. At one point she explains the psychology of one of her sisters (Chou) and compares her sister's personality to her own, explaining that she acted badly towards her sister because of her own insecurities and that her sister was the bigger person. One of the themes that she underscores in her book is that human beings can have many different reactions to tragedy and sacrifice. (Some people she mentions, including her own psychological reaction, fixate at one point on hatred and vengeance. Other family members react without hate and simply endure). She and her family are forced to find food any way they can during their ordeals, and at times slowly watch one another starving to death.
   
   It is not a pretty story, but there is also hope and resilience. Loung Ung tells of the heroism of her little brother in trying to get food for their mother and baby sister. There are times in this book where you will probably cry. Before reading this book I knew relatively little about the history of Cambodia or its conflict. After reading this book though, I can at least say that I understand the human toll and shared cultural memory from the entire generation that lived through the seminal events of the Khmer Rouge's rise and fall. The letters to the author at the back of the book are also of interest, and I actually wish she had included more. You can see some of the reactions to her book, many written by Cambodians or those with family who lived through it.
   
   All in all, this is an excellent book, well-edited and briskly paced. To know the truth of what happened there is more than enough, but she goes one step farther. She makes the reader feel as if they have been invited to share in the insights of her family, understanding not only their suffering but also who they were, their personalities, idiosyncrasies and relationships. Ultimately in reading this book we are able to mourn what is lost because she effectively ushers us into her world.

5 comments about Waiting for Snow in Havana: Confessions of a Cuban Boy.

1. I think that the book offers a lot of insight to the life of a Cuban boy and the struggles and hardships that he faced. It was well written, but dragged in many parts. Parts made me laugh others made me cry. Overall, I liked the book, it had a good message, but I would say that the overall pace of the book is slow so it takes a while to get through.



2. Enjoyed reading about the life of Carlos Eire as he grew up in Cuba. He lived a privileged life that changed dramatically when he was airlifted out of Cuba as a child. What a sacrifice made by his parents and thousands of others that wanted a better life for their children.



3. After seeing the CNBC production, Operation Pedro Pan: The Greatest Migration of Children in the Western Hemisphere, a two year, highly irregular procedure that brought more than 14,000 unaccompanied Cuban children and teenagers to the United States.
   The operation was designed to transport the children of parents who opposed the revolutionary Cuban government.
   I ordered the book and I was not disappointed.
   Carlos Eire, the author, has a terrific writing sense and I found the book hard to put down.
   This is a great read for the summer and also for anyone who is not familiar with the subject of Cuban-American relations in the '60s.



4. There is no doubt that Eire is a talented author, with a style I would describe as lyrical - even poetic at times. He gave nuanced accounts of his childhood memories of pre-Castro Havana, along with some graphic details of boyhood activities lending new meaning to the word "machismo". This too seems part of the Cuban culture which I accept as such and do not critique. Nonetheless, since he wrote this book in an intuitive (as opposed to a structured) style, I felt a repetition of ideas, a redundancy that I personally found bothersome. As an author I have been taught to "Never fall in love with your words.", meaning that just because phrases are beautiful, witty or heartbreakingly sad, they need a further purpose to find a home in that book. Had I handed this manuscript to my editor, I know she would have come in with a red marker pen and chopped huge chunks from the text. I skipped over paragraphs and pages on end, yet found the last third of the book gripping. All said, Waiting for Snow in Havana was a good read for me, but I can't help wondering why it received the prestigious National Book Award.
   
   Lois W. stern
   Author of Sex, Lies and Cosmetic Surgery
   and
   Tick Tock, Stop the Clock ~ Getting Pretty on Your Lunch Hour



5. A rambling but well-written book. It led to a stimulating discussion in our book club.

5 comments about Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood.

1. The beginning of the book was good. It gave a great in depth view of Fuller's life in Africa. Towards the middle of the book it all became a bit predictable however. I sometimes feel as though I have already the same scenario a few chapters before. Otherwise the book was very well written. Fuller's bluntness and partial naiveness made the book easy to get through.



2. This was a story that was hard to read because of the hardship of the child growing up. It was a great insight to what it would be like to grow-up in the African wilds. One would have to put aside all judgements of what should be and accept that this is the truth of what this child lived in her day. I like true stories and this is one I am glad I read and feel that I can have a deeper insight into the lives of people in a third world country.
   
   I have also lived in a third world country so know that much of this story is real. I am glad I read it.



3. Fuller describes her African childhood in detail, from the death of her sibling to playing in the wild. Her British parents rather liked living in remote locations such as Zimbabwe and brought their daughters with them. At some points in the book, it is hard to believe that the story of Fuller's very amazing upbringing is true.



4. This is a book for my book club. It took a while to arrive but it came in good condition and was a great read. Makes me want to go to Africa.



5. We often think of colonialism of Africa is black and white, but this book disproved the myth and offered more insight on the subject. In no way I am endorsing colonialism, but I think the book made the point that everyone, including her obviously racist parents, are a victim of colonialism yet everyone picked up the pieces time and time again and tries to make the best of what life has to offer.

5 comments about Still Alive: A Holocaust Girlhood Remembered (The Helen Rose Scheuer Jewish Women's Series).

1. Could not lay the book down until finished. How did we let non-humans run the world?



2. Reading *Still Alive* was like having a conversation with someone I like and admire. A one-sided conversation, one might say, since Kluger was doing all the talking, and I was contributing nothing but my interpretation of her words. But Kluger answered many of the questions I would have asked, had she been sitting across from me. "What was it like after you escaped, when you were thrown in with Germans who were running from the approaching Allies? Did you talk to them?" I would have asked. "For them," she would have said, "it was despair, they were leaving behind everything; while for me, it was joy, because I was gaining everything -- the rest of my life." (I am not quoting the exact words from the book here, but writing the general idea from memory). "Did the culture's attitude toward you as a woman make it more difficult to recover from the humiliation you suffered as a camp inmate?" "What was it like to go from being a very private child, to being crammed into a mass of other humans?" "How was your relationship with your mother after the war, after you grew up?" "What was it like going to a strange place, having to learn a new language, a new culture?" "How could you tolerate life as a U.S. housewife in the 1950's? Of course it was far better than life in the camps, but still ..."
   
   Kluger's personality comes across as irrepressible. Her book inspires me rather than depressing me. For example, having described her childhood compulsion to memorize poetry early in the book, Kluger mentions composing poems about the camps with (not so appropriate) catchy rhythms and rhymes, because it made them easier to memorize, and of course she had to commit them to memory since paper and writing implements were scarce, and anyhow, how else could one be sure of holding onto them? I smile as I remember that. Even as she starved for food and water, she found a way to create treasures that no one could take away from her, as long as she lived.
   
   I have to confess that I do not read German, so I would not be able to appreciate Dr. Kluger's literary criticism. I am sad that she has not published more poetry and observations of life.



3. Let's the reader know that after the horror was over, they were still strong enough to make real lives for themselves. Excellent.



4. Having read the stellar reviews and being immersed in the genre, I certainly looked forward to Ms. Kluger's memoirs.
   
   Without being too judgmental of Ms. Kluger, at the same time I suspect Ms. Kluger would prefer me to be honest. And my opinion may be colored because I recently read Clara's War, in my opinion one of the finest survival memoirs I have ever read.
   
   There is no question that the author has put the full force of her intellect and personality in this book. She has strong opinions on a whole range of topics, and delves deeply into her difficult relations with schoolmates and teachers growing up, her mother, her relatives, her children, her ex-husband, his friends, colleagues, even her psychotherapist.
   
   And that's the common theme running through this book -- she pretty much has difficult relations with everyone she meets. Whether intentional or not, Ms. Kluger comes off through the pages of this book as someone who is not entirely likable, who is very judgmental, critical, somewhat pretentious in terms of her academic standing, defensive, and who justifies at length a series of uncomfortable anecdotes in which she has difficulty with numerous disparate people, places, and events.
   
   Because Ms. Kluger strongly denounces the "victimology" that has grown around the horrific events of the Holocaust, I am quite certain the author wants to be evaluated based on who she is, not what she went through (terribly) as a child. And I agree with many of her views and her perspective on man/woman relations, human suffering and various social issues.
   
   Still, I was pleased to be done with the book.



5. I found this book extremely tedious, poorly edited, full of boring speculations and philosophical self centerdness. Am shocked at myself being able to say this about any survivor, but there you have it. I kept thinking, "OK, now when are you going to get on with the actual story", before realizing that it just droned on in this way. A much better book that I just read is 'A Jump for Life', a far more moving account and likeable woman.

5 comments about A Tale of Love and Darkness.

1. A brilliantly written autobiography, A Tale of Love and Darkness is sometimes gorgeously descriptive, witty, with beautifully rounded and developed characters. At times, however, it's a hard slog.
   It's amazing how Oz somehow managed to know and interact with so many of the fathers and mothers of the State of Israel. The history alone makes this a powerful read.



2. There are 54 reviewers who recorded their thoughts before mine. So, my review includes some comments on those reviews.
   
   I found the book to be very fascinating because I am very curious about Jews as people and Israel as a country. Amos Oz has gone through events that few people go through in their life ... the most difficult one is his mother's suicide. The story is told in a radiating style with his mother's suicide being the focus. Events either flow towards it or away from it. It is not easy to tell such a difficult, painful story. Amos Oz tells it very effectively and virtually takes you into his life. His prose is so beautiful. He is also very humorous.
   
   As many commented, this book is not completely autobiographical. A bulk of it is on his childhood years. He was in kibbutz for nearly 35 years starting from when he was nearly 15, but less than one third of the book is devoted to it. While so much detail is shared with readers about his reading habits, the people influenced him, etc., the life-changing decision he made with respect to joining kibbutz is told as if he woke up one day and decided to do it. There is no detail on how he found out about it, what he thought about it initially, and how he ultimately came up with the conviction.
   
   Someone has mentioned that there are nothing but street names in the first 70 pages and the book was so boring they could not continue. I feel sorry for the person because he missed the best parts of the book. Even in the first 70 pages, there are a number of events of interest. In fact the most poetical paragraph in the book is in the first 70 pages which describes how his mother acted in the presence of a famous writer (Agnon).



3. Amos Oz is one of Israel's best known novelists; some label him as Israel's "number one". Any new book by Oz gets the immediate attention of everyone, gets translated to several languages and hits the no. 1 spot in the bestsellers list almost immediately. Indeed, Oz has become an icon in Israel to whom many turn to, not only to discuss literary matters but also get his opinion on politics, society and life in general. As my wife says, he has become a "sacred cow", elevated to a status where it has become extremely difficult for any critic to harm sales of his books in any significant way.
   
   I read A Tale of Love and Darkness (in Hebrew) during my trip in New Zealand and it accompanied me throughout the journey. It is an autobiography that Oz started writing shortly after he turned 60, at the end of the previous century. It tells mainly the story of his childhood in Jerusalem, growing up during the time Israel was being formed (Oz was 9 when Israel gained independence). Although the book covers many aspects of his life, the one overriding theme surfacing over and over again is the suicide of his mother when he was 12. This event shaped Oz's life and led to the abrupt change he embarked upon two years later: the move from the book-centric, scholarly life of his father in Jerusalem to the freedom and agricultural life of Kibbutz Hulda.
   
   Oz's writing is at times long-winded and pompous. Even daily, mundane events are recounted in excruciating detail that sometimes make the reader wonder whether they indeed made such an impact on his life to deserve such attention. Despite this, Oz manages to combine tragedy and comedy in his family's saga and his occasional self-effacing manner make the reader forgive him for his long-windedness. Throughout the book, the leading figures of Israel as a young nation pop up: Bialik, Tchernikhowsky, Agnon, Ben-Gurion and Yadin all came and went in Oz's childhood.
   
   The book is more of a memoir than an autobiography. The storyline is not linear and Oz repeats some events several times. If we ignore the fact that Oz wrote this book and thus remove the "sacred cow" factor, the book is an enjoyable read and contributes to the understanding of how Ashkenazi Jews coped with their new life in the Middle East.



4. This review was published in The Australian, August 16, 2008. Greg Sheridan is the Foreign Editor.
   [...]
   Memoirs are made of this
   
   OPINION: Greg Sheridan | August 16, 2008
   
   A FEW years ago I experienced a severe addiction to travel literature.
   
   With the contemporary serious novel in such a mess, travel writing, like biography, offers many of the traditional pleasures of the novel: story, character, good dialogue, development, resolution. But I can't say I discovered any great literature there, much as I enjoyed Bill Bryson's wit and Paul Theroux's misanthropy.
   
   Now I am immersed in a frenetic bout of memoir reading and here the story is different.
   
   When Tom Wolfe was promoting the new journalism, which has been with us several decades now, his essential insight was to bring the techniques of the novelist to bear on journalism: exploring the subjective elements of a story, the characters' inner lives and interior monologues, with the advantage that the events had actually happened.
   
   A novelist's memoir can achieve this supremely. A Tale of Love and Darkness is the childhood memoir of Amos Oz, Israel's greatest novelist and surely soon a recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature.
   
   This is an incomparably good book. Perhaps it is the best book I have read. It tells of growing up in Jerusalem in the 1930s and '40s. Oz conceives life as one part comedy, one part tragedy, one part humdrum, quotidian concreteness, and if you are Jewish, the chance always of utter disaster.
   
   His life proceeds against the backdrop of the Holocaust and the birth of Israel. Oz is an only child and his life is also shaped by the suicide of his mother when he is 12. This colossal roadblock dominates and shapes the book and yet does not distort the loving portrait of his father, a frustrated academic, out of his depth and at his wits' end with his wife's melancholy.
   
   Oz's technical accomplishments in this book are dazzling. He writes of his grandfather:
   
   It was not easy for him to go out. Grandma had a highly developed, super-sensitive radar screen on which she kept track of us all: at any given moment she could check the inventory, to know precisely where each of us was, Lonia at his desk in the National Library on the fourth floor of the Terra Sancta Building, Zussya at Cafe Atara, Fania sitting in the B'nai B'rith Library, Amos playing with his best friend Eliyahu next door at Mr Friedmann the engineer's, in the first building on the right. Only at the edge of her screen, behind the extinguished galaxy, in the corner from which her son Zyuzya, Zyuzinka, with Malka and little Daniel, whom she had never seen or washed, were supposed to flicker back at her, all she could see by day or night was a terrifying black hole.
   
   This passage is instructive. First, there is a lovely metaphor for domestic life. How many grandmas have their perfect family radar screens? Then, everyone is mentioned by name. There is the accumulation of small details of location that give the passage life. But suddenly, at the end, the shocking reality of the Holocaust explodes this domestic tableau, as it does intermittently throughout these beautiful memories.
   
   Almost every page of this book contains an observation or metaphor so striking you cannot let it go, or rather it will not let you go. Oz writes: "Both my parents had come to Jerusalem straight from the 19th century."
   
   The contrast, indeed conflict, of east European Jews trying to recreate an idealised Europe, one free of anti-Semitism, in the hot, dusty climate of Israel, surrounded by hostile Arabs, is mined by Oz as much for comedy as tragedy. And there is endless comic delight in the crazy clash of expectation with reality. For bookish, intellectual, urban Jews such as Oz and his family, the kibbutz pioneers were a new kind of Jew. Oz mocks his own earnest idealisation of kibbutz pioneers, yet somehow affirms it as well:
   
   Tough, warm-hearted, though of course silent and thoughtful, young men and strapping, straightforward young women ... I pictured these pioneers as strong, serious, self-contained people, capable of sitting around in a circle and singing songs of heart-rending longing, or songs of mockery, or songs of outrageous lust ... (people) who could ride wild horses or wide-tracked tractors, who spoke Arabic, who knew every cave and wadi, who had a way with pistols and hand grenades, yet read poetry and philosophy.
   
   Oz is free of self-pity. Instead there is a generous human solidarity and understanding for everyone. But there are passages of aching melancholy and pain. The night the UN votes to establish Israel is the happiest night imaginable. Though it too is tinged with fear, as the Jews of Jerusalem are always in dread of a second holocaust. But the recognition of the Zionist dream is a fulfilment of generations' desires.
   
   In all his life, Oz never sees his father weep, except that night. The father crawls into bed beside young Amos and tousles his hair:
   
   Then he told me in a whisper what some hooligans did to him and his brother David in Odessa and what some gentile boys did to him at his Polish school in Vilna, and the girls joined in too, and the next day, when his father, Grandpa Alexander, came to the school to register a complaint, the bullies refused to return the torn trousers but attacked his father, Grandpa, in front of his eyes, forced him down on to the paving stones and removed his trousers too in the middle of the playground, and the girls laughed and made dirty jokes, saying that the Jews were all so-and-sos, while the teachers watched and said nothing.
   
   Now, the father tells Amos, people may bully you, but not because you are a Jew: "Not that. Never again. From tonight that's finished here. For ever." Most of the book is not political in that sense. It's full of jokes, though its genius is to blend comedy and tragedy. Oz recounts how as a kid he talked all the time, but that was fine because everyone in Jerusalem talked all the time. A professor tells Oz that the odds of there being an afterlife, as there is no conclusive evidence either way, are 50-50. For a central European Jew in the generation of Hitler, those chances of survival are not at all bad.
   
   When a great novelist writes a memoir with all the technique of the novel at its best, you get a superior art form. If I could recommend just one book to tell you something about the human condition, this would be it.



5. Amos Oz's A Tale of Love and Darkness is a memoir of his life and the life of his family up until the time of his mother's suicide at the age of 38 in the early 1950s. Oz's mother's suicide, never treated fictionally in his other work (as far as I can recall) is treated here with great care and thoroughness: there is anger, guilt, shame, sadness, loss, a sense of regret, and penetrating understanding. Without a doubt the book is strongest when Oz discusses his mother and her family. His mother, brought up on a romantic, Hebrew education in Rovno, was not ready for the tawdriness of life in Palestine, "the rough terrain of everyday life, diapers, husbands, migraines, queues, smells of moth balls and kitchen sinks." The story of his mother's mental decline and suicide is also the story of the convergence and divergences of Jewish life in the 20th century; the outline of the gap between the real and the ideal of the Zionist dream. That said, A Tale of Love and Darkness is generally overwritten. There is much useless repetition here which drags down the trajectory of the memoir. I do not recommend this work as the first work of Amos Oz to be read, but the last. It makes for an instructive book end with Where the Jackal's Howl and Other Stories on the other side.