bookpagedev

Fiction

Spinning fiction from fact

Review by bookpagedev

Phil Fitch has reached a crossroads in his post-‘Nam existence: he can play out a string of low-wage, brain-numbing jobs, or take a crack at two hundred large and retire in comfort. The only hitch is, he’s not gambling on slots in Vegas. He’s hijacking a plane. In the unlikely event he isn’t killed by cops or a faulty parachute, he’ll be on the lam forever. After being laid off from his janitorial gig and losing his wife, that doesn’t seem like such a bad option.

Roscoe Arbuckle is tired of being called “Fatty.” He’s exhausted from riding the celebrity roller coaster from obscurity to renown and back again (with some breathtaking peaks and valleys in between). He wiles away the days hooked on morphine carefully administered by his valet, the only remnant of his fame. Like a trained seal, he performs his final trick: telling his life story in doses as carefully measured as the drug.

Phil and Roscoe are people you’ve heard of, but don’t know. The former is infamous plane hijacker D.B. Cooper’s alternate identity in Elwood Reid’s tautly strung novel, D.

B.. The latter is best known as “Fatty” Arbuckle, film comedy megastar of the 1920s, rendered vividly in Jerry Stahl’s highly entertaining I, Fatty (Bloomsbury, $23.95, 256 pages, ISBN 1582342474). Both Reid (author of If I Don’t Six and Midnight Sun) and Stahl (whose Permanent Midnight became a Ben Stiller movie) prove themselves capable practitioners of what might be called fauxography, the part-biography, part-fiction trend that has grown out of the ’70s “new journalism” movement. Authors have long been putting words in their characters’ mouths, but imagining the life of a real person has its pitfalls. Though weaving fact and fiction can often make for a truer, more revealing portrait of a person than bare fact alone, other people’s memories are just waiting out there to indict and contradict one’s work. (Just ask Pulitzer prize-winning biographer Edwin Morris, author of Dutch: A Memoir of Ronald Reagan.) Fortunately for Reid and Stahl, the subjects of their novels are either little known or little remembered. Each author has breathed the second and third dimensions into these real-life figures, allowing them to emerge from the page into our consciousness.

Fitch/Cooper, a shadowy figure at best, only gained fame as “D.

B.” Cooper due to a reporter’s error. The known facts are that a man calling himself Dan Cooper hijacked a Northwest Orient Boeing 727 on Thanksgiving eve in 1971, parachuting out with his $200,000 ransom over Washington state. Reid speculates that Mexico would be the logical place for a man with a large cache of purloined cash and a “wanted” poster. As Cooper immerses himself into the easy life south of the border, his former FBI nemesis attempts a more conventional retirement. When circumstances dictate Cooper’s return, Reid expertly renders their pas de deux, ratcheting up the tension to a surprising conclusion.

Roscoe Arbuckle, on the other hand, was, in his day, about as high-profile as they come. Meticulously researched by Stahl, I, Fatty traces Arbuckle’s life from unwanted child to silent film superstar to unwitting fall guy for a movie industry demonized by the era’s moralists. Told in the first person, it’s the kind of celebrity “autobiography” one could only dream of in this era of gatekeeper publicists and spin control. Stahl unravels the film legend’s life with a clear-eyed and unsentimental perspective. In one passage, he’s asked by a nurse if he is Roscoe Arbuckle. “Well,” he replies, “I’d hate to look like this and not be Roscoe Arbuckle.” How could you not be charmed by that? Arbuckle’s charisma overshadows the fact that he looks like a sideshow freak, is physically and psychically dysfunctional, and spends the last third of the book enduring the effects of two murder trials. He is eventually found innocent of the charges, but this particular phoenix arose from the ashes with both wings charred. Spinning the last of his tale, he wistfully accepts his fate: “I ask you again, what was anything a fat man accomplished? A pile of leaves waiting for a wind.” Cooper may still be at large, or he may be among his own pile of leaves somewhere in a Washington forest. It’s uncertain whether either he or Arbuckle lived out their days as their fauxographers would have it. But both of these highly engaging novels allow the reader to suspend disbelief and make one wish it were so.

Phil Fitch has reached a crossroads in his post-'Nam existence: he can play out a string of low-wage, brain-numbing jobs, or take a crack at two hundred large and retire in comfort. The only hitch is, he's not gambling on slots in Vegas. He's hijacking…
Children's & YA

Gold medal reading

Review by bookpagedev

Sue Macy’s Swifter, Higher, Stronger: A Photographic History of the Summer Olympics is classified as children’s book, but it will appeal to readers of all ages. Chock-full of history, trivia and profiles, the book is an incredible repository of information about the summer Games. Macy starts by explaining how Frenchman Pierre de Coubertin combined seemingly disparate elements the notion of improving character through sports, the pomp and pageantry of World Fairs to create the modern Olympic Games, the first of which were held in 1896. From there, Macy traces the development of the modern Games, touching on groundbreaking moments (the first women or minorities to compete), moments of tragedy (Munich in 1972) and times when politics threatened to upstage sport (Berlin in 1936, Moscow and Los Angeles in the 1980s).

The Olympic story is enhanced with images of everything from a multiple exposure recording of Nadia Comaneci’s 1976 balance beam performance to the 1968 medal stand protest of Tommie Smith and John Carlos to Olympic posters and mascots. If the Olympic Games are covered as well on network-TV as they are in this book, we’ve got a great summer ahead.

Sue Macy's Swifter, Higher, Stronger: A Photographic History of the Summer Olympics is classified as children's book, but it will appeal to readers of all ages. Chock-full of history, trivia and profiles, the book is an incredible repository of information about the summer Games.…
Mystery & SuspenseMystery

It’s a mystery

Review by bookpagedev

<B>It’s a mystery</B> Noted Greek writer Petros Markaris uses a thoroughly modern and thoroughly corrupt Athens as the backdrop for an international mystery in <B>Deadline in Athens</B>. The novel introduces the overworked and underpaid Athenian homicide inspector Costas Haritos, who wants to do nothing more than quickly close his cases and get his boss and the media off his back. But he can’t abide the unanswered questions in his head. Soon what looks like a simple crime of passion among poverty-stricken Albanian immigrants turns into an international investigation. Well-crafted with a set of memorable characters and satisfying plot twists, <B>Deadline in Athens</B> provides just enough hints to keep you guessing and more than enough suspense to keep you reading. <I>Howard Shirley is a writer in Nashville.</I>

<B>It's a mystery</B> Noted Greek writer Petros Markaris uses a thoroughly modern and thoroughly corrupt Athens as the backdrop for an international mystery in <B>Deadline in Athens</B>. The novel introduces the overworked and underpaid Athenian homicide inspector Costas Haritos, who wants to do nothing more…
Sports

Mythic proportions

Review by bookpagedev

Where Spivey cleans away the myths of the Olympics, Phil Cousineau seeks to restore them. In The Olympic Odyssey: Rekindling the True Spirit of the Great Games, Cousineau convincingly argues that sport is more than just amusement or exercise, but a transcendent act of body, mind and spirit that lifts participant and spectator alike in ways both more lasting and profound than the simple running of a race or throwing of a ball. In the vein of Joseph Campbell (The Faces of Myth), Cousineau calls on us to treat the Olympics not only as an opportunity for entertainment and global competition, but as a grand mythic ritual of the human spirit. His book is thought-provoking, challenging and inspiring, with just enough philosophy to make one ponder the meaning of the modern games, and lift their viewing to more than just a night in front of the TV.

Howard Shirley is a writer in Nashville.

Where Spivey cleans away the myths of the Olympics, Phil Cousineau seeks to restore them. In The Olympic Odyssey: Rekindling the True Spirit of the Great Games, Cousineau convincingly argues that sport is more than just amusement or exercise, but a transcendent act of body,…
History

War and peace in the colonies

Review by bookpagedev

The February 1763 Treaty of Paris that officially ended the French and Indian War (the Seven Years’ War) set in motion a series of actions that led to unintended and unpredictable consequences for the peoples of North America. But, as Dartmouth historian Colin G. Calloway demonstrates in his superb narrative history, The Scratch of a Pen: 1763 and The Transformation of North America, The Peace of Paris brought little peace to North America, where Indian war dominated 1763 and where turmoil and movement led, ultimately, to civil war and revolution. This latest title in Oxford’s outstanding Pivotal Moments in American History series gives us the Big Picture, as well as concise and insightful descriptions of individuals and groups.

For example, Calloway describes the Native Americans as being stunned by the news that France had handed over their lands to Britain without even consulting them. He finds Jeffrey Amherst, the British commander-in-chief, arrogant and ignorant of Indian ways, and his policies significantly changed British-Indian relations, putting British lives in danger. Pontiac’s War, named after the Ottawa war chief, was really a war of independence in which Indian peoples resisted the British Empire a dozen years before American colonists did. Britain’s attempt to rule its huge North American territory revealed the fragility of its imperial power. From the government’s perspective, it seemed reasonable to expect the colonists to bear some of the expenses of victory after all, British ministers pointed out, the war had been fought for them. But, as we know now, taxation and the rights of the colonists fueled protest, rebellion and revolution. The Scratch of a Pen also details the crucial roles played by other factors, including increased immigration from Europe and demand for land, rampant disease and racial tension. America in 1763 was a crowded and often confused stage, Calloway says. His impressive panoramic view is a marvel of the historian’s craft and provides another way of looking at the reasons for what happened in 1776. Roger Bishop is a Nashville bookseller and a frequent contributor to BookPage.

The February 1763 Treaty of Paris that officially ended the French and Indian War (the Seven Years' War) set in motion a series of actions that led to unintended and unpredictable consequences for the peoples of North America. But, as Dartmouth historian Colin G. Calloway…
History

Cast in stone

Review by bookpagedev

Greece, of course, is known not only as the birthplace of history and philosophy, but of classic art. Few works of Greek art have inspired as much interest or controversy as the famed “Elgin Marbles” in the British Museum. These magnificent fragments and sculptures from the Parthenon were transported to England (or stolen from Greece, depending on your point of view) in the early 1800s by the British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, Thomas Bruce, the 7th Earl of Elgin. Mistress of the Elgin Marbles: A Biography of Mary Nisbet, Countess of Elgin, by Susan Nagel, tells the story of Mary Nisbet, Lord Elgin’s young wife and one of the wealthiest heiresses in Europe of that era. It was Mary who funded the collection of the marbles and beguiled the Sultan himself into permitting their removal en masse. But even more lasting than Nisbet’s diplomatic successes may have been the impact of her tragedies. Shortly after their return home, Lord Elgin stunned both Mary and British society by accusing her of adultery with his best friend. The scandal rocked the British ruling class; Elgin lost his political future, and Mary lost her family. But the sensationalism and injustice of their battle sowed the long, slow seeds of reform, eventually leading to changes in British divorce law and the acknowledgement of property rights for women. Nagel has crafted a fascinating biography of a charming and intelligent woman, who pushed aside the expected boundaries of her sex and influenced the world in many ways.

Howard Shirley is a writer in Nashville.

Greece, of course, is known not only as the birthplace of history and philosophy, but of classic art. Few works of Greek art have inspired as much interest or controversy as the famed "Elgin Marbles" in the British Museum. These magnificent fragments and sculptures from…
Sports

Ali and Cosell, sparring partners

Review by bookpagedev

Veteran sportswriter Dave Kindred’s byline has appeared, most prominently, in the Louisville Courier-Journal, The Washington Post and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He is an obvious and excellent candidate to have written Sound and Fury: The Parallel Lives and Fateful Friendship of Muhammad Ali and Howard Cosell. Kindred’s own prime reporting years coincided with the rise of both of his subjects and he knew them well, not only as iconic figures but also as people. He deftly balances his insider knowledge with a sincere effort to explain each man’s rise to fame, the contentiousness that surrounded their careers and the strangely fortuitous intersection of their personas. His aim is to capture Ali and Cosell as they crossed paths in the ’60s and ’70s, and to replay for his audience how the explosion in television sports of that era made huge stars of them both.

Yet much of his book offers alternating chapters on each man as an individual, filled with insightful biographical detail and infused with the good journalist’s desire to achieve balance in his coverage. Cosell the pushy Brooklyn Jew who, fairly late in life, parlayed his connections as a lawyer into a broadcasting career emerges as a somewhat pathetic antihero, but one whose essential egotism and neediness were ultimately leavened by his success as a family man. Ali is the brash, mouthy, Louisville-born wunderkind boxer who became the world heavyweight champion at the age of 22, regained the crown twice more, and became a hugely controversial public figure when he refused to enter the Army during the Vietnam War. Ali evokes pathos as well, by virtue of his ultimate naivete, his premature physical deterioration (which shocked a public that knew him so well as a godly athlete), and the ease with which he was manipulated by opportunistic others, including Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad.

Kindred’s narrative rises and falls with the pulse of an involving title fight, its combatants vying fiercely for personal attention and airtime. With its focus on two of the most recognizable names in the history of modern sports, this volume will draw immediate and wide interest from well-rewarded readers.

Veteran sportswriter Dave Kindred's byline has appeared, most prominently, in the Louisville Courier-Journal, The Washington Post and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He is an obvious and excellent candidate to have written Sound and Fury: The Parallel Lives and Fateful Friendship of Muhammad Ali and Howard Cosell.…
Sports

Ancient history

Review by bookpagedev

The hosting of the Olympics in Athens, after a modern absence of 108 years, is reason enough to explore the origin of the Games themselves. Nigel Spivey does this admirably in The Ancient Olympics, tracing the games’ origins from a local footrace to the leading sporting event of the ancient world. The book offers not only insight into the ancient games at Olympia, but into Greek attitudes about athletics, religion, social class and physical beauty, and how these same attitudes, for good or ill, have survived into our own time. Spivey’s book is an interesting study of history, art, literature and philosophy that scrapes away the layers of myth covering the reality of the ancient games.

Howard Shirley is a writer in Nashville.

The hosting of the Olympics in Athens, after a modern absence of 108 years, is reason enough to explore the origin of the Games themselves. Nigel Spivey does this admirably in The Ancient Olympics, tracing the games' origins from a local footrace to the…

FictionHistorical Fiction

Imagining F. Scott’s former flame

Review by bookpagedev

<b>Imagining F. Scott’s former flame</b> Caroline Preston’s third novel, <b>Gatsby’s Girl</b>, tells the story of the brief and disastrous romance of Ginevra Perry and F. Scott Fitzgerald and what followed in Ginevra’s life. Ginevra was 16 and Fitzgerald 19 when they met through a mutual friend; their brief relationship was filled with ardent letters. Ginevra called Fitzgerald clever with words but mostly saw him as an annoying drunk. He said she threw him over with supreme boredom and indifference after he visited her in Lake Forest, Illinois, and attended an engagement party with her, where she met the man she would later marry, aviator Billy Granger. Preston’s Ginevra and the circumstances of her relationship with Fitzgerald are based on a real-life love of Fitzgerald’s, socialite Ginevra King, who was the inspiration for some of Fitzgerald’s most famous female characters, including Isabelle in <i>This Side of Paradise</i> and Daisy Buchanan in <i>The Great Gatsby</i>. Preston builds her story on the facts known about Ginevra and Fitzgerald’s relationship, but she takes liberties with the rest of Ginevra’s life in this clever and imaginative work. An unhappy marriage, a mentally disturbed child who is obsessed with movie stars, and the search for herself in Fitzgerald’s stories punctuate the unfulfilled life of Fitzgerald’s former flame. When Ginevra visits Fitzgerald in Hollywood some 20 years after their romance, the two epitomize Fitzgerald’s cracked-plate metaphor: not good enough for company to see but still serviceable for midnight snacks and the storing of leftovers. This strange and lovely story is incredibly real, at times feeling more like a biography than a novel. Though this is a work of fiction, it should be read by anyone interested in Fitzgerald’s work, the times in which he lived and the women who inspired him to write stories that have touched generations of readers.

<i>Sarah E. White is a freelance writer in Arkansas.</i>

<b>Imagining F. Scott's former flame</b> Caroline Preston's third novel, <b>Gatsby's Girl</b>, tells the story of the brief and disastrous romance of Ginevra Perry and F. Scott Fitzgerald and what followed in Ginevra's life. Ginevra was 16 and Fitzgerald 19 when they met through a mutual…
Nature

Winds of change

Review by bookpagedev

Remembering a deadly hurricane, 35 years later Philip Hearn was a young UPI reporter stationed in Birmingham, Alabama, the night of August 17, 1969, when Hurricane Camille roared across Mississippi’s Gulf Coast, sweeping away virtually everything in its course. In Mississippi, the vicious Category 5 storm killed 172 people. As it continued into Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio, West Virginia and Virginia with its still lethal winds and flash floods, it slaughtered another 175. Apart from the cost in human lives, Camille also destroyed an estimated $8.6 billion worth of property. Even today, signs of its devastation remain. Now, 35 years later, Hearn brings readers a cinematic reconstruction of the devastating storm in Hurricane Camille: Monster Storm of the Gulf Coast.

“I had no special interest [in hurricanes] at that time, except for the same interest that everyone else did in this area,” Hearn tells BookPage from his office at Mississippi State University, where he is a research writer. “Later on, when I went to the University of Southern Mississippi as news director for the public relations office, I came across the oral histories of the survivors of Camille. I found some of the accounts to be riveting. After I went through them, I realized that maybe I could do a series of newspaper stories [on the storm]. I did that in 1989, to coincide with the 20th anniversary of Camille. That was my starting point.” In 2000, at the urging of the chairman of USM’s history department, Hearn began his formal work on the book.

To manage the surfeit of eyewitness stories, Hearn focused on the accounts of 15 survivors. Eyewitness accounts are notoriously unreliable, particularly in times of excitement and stress. But Hearn says he found the survivors’ stories basically consistent and in accord with the news reports of the disaster. “They were the people,” he explains, “who had to struggle mightily for their own lives and who saw family and friends perish all around them.” One man, who had sought refuge in a church with his family, lost his wife, 11 of his children and one grandchild that terrible night. Another victim heard the double-doors of his house snap open and turned to see his new Oldsmobile floating in. An apartment building the inhabitants thought was storm-proof was quickly shredded to the foundation.

Although racial tensions were still running high in Mississippi in the late ’60s, there is no mention of them in the book. “I did not run into any unusual situation that involved the races,” says Hearn. “I think pretty much everyone who lived along that area [where the storm came ashore] was in the same boat. The devastation was so complete. As a matter of fact, it seemed like the people really rallied around one another.” There’s always a problem in sustaining drama with an event that’s brief and whose outcome is already known. But Hearn handles it deftly by holding the ravages of Camille at bay while he gives a brief history of hurricanes, describes how this particular one formed and then follows its killing winds as they roar into the Gulf, sweep over the barrier islands and collide catastrophically with the coast. He demonstrates time and again that he still has a reporter’s eye for precise detail, as in this passage: “The atomic-bomb effect of Camille’s 200-miles-per-hour wind gusts and 25-foot storm surge destroyed 100 years of growth and progress along the Mississippi coast in just three hours. Ancient oak trees were uprooted and washed into the mix with piers, signs, vehicles, boats, power poles, roofs, floors, walls, furniture, appliances, and other scattered residue of civilization. A variety of vessels, including large barges, were lifted from the Gulf and deposited on the beach as sand washed over the seawall, covering or crumbling large portions of U. S. Highway 90.” While Hearn’s descriptions of the storm’s aftermath are less dramatic, they are no less poignant. We learn that the man who lost most of his family coped with his grief by helping rescue workers recover their bodies and then tenderly laying them out side by side. “We’ve got to go on living,” Hearn quotes him as saying. “You can’t run away from it.” Thousands of animals perished in the storm, and hundreds of domesticated ones were killed deliberately “because no facilities or food existed for their care.” In the weeks and months that followed, Hearn reports, many of the survivors suffered severe emotional problems. One woman stepped out of her trailer, surveyed the destruction and shot herself. A psychiatrist estimated that divorces in the area “probably quadrupled” after Camille.

In spite of the formidable research skills and narrative flair he brought to the book, Hearn says that any credit for the book’s impact lies elsewhere. “These people told the story with their personal accounts. I just hoped I could blend it all together.” That he has done.

Remembering a deadly hurricane, 35 years later Philip Hearn was a young UPI reporter stationed in Birmingham, Alabama, the night of August 17, 1969, when Hurricane Camille roared across Mississippi's Gulf Coast, sweeping away virtually everything in its course. In Mississippi, the vicious Category…
Fiction

Modern life and its discontents

Review by bookpagedev

In 1999, A.M. Homes told an interviewer, Life is incredibly surrealistic. Especially where I live, in New York City, the weirdest things happen every day. Substitute Los Angeles for New York City, and that observation provides an apt thumbnail sketch of her latest novel, This Book Will Save Your Life.

To all appearances, wealthy day-trader Richard Novak has skillfully insulated himself from the stresses of daily life inside his luxurious home high above Los Angeles. But one day, a sudden attack of excruciating pain lands him in the emergency room and the defenses he’s carefully constructed against real life begin to crumble. His physical safety is jeopardized by an expanding sinkhole that threatens to devour his house. Friendless except for the housekeeper, nutritionist and personal trainer who cater to his needs, he soon acquires an odd assortment of new companions: Anhil, the upwardly mobile Indian owner of a doughnut shop; Cynthia, an emotionally abused woman he encounters crying in the produce aisle of the supermarket; and Nic, a Hollywood writer. Richard attends a meditation retreat, abandons his carefully calibrated diet and even gains some modest celebrity when he saves a kidnap victim who’s flashing Morse code signals from the trunk of a moving car.

At the emotional heart of the novel is the reconciliation between Richard and his son Ben, who has driven cross-country with his cousin Barth to see his father for the first time in almost a year. Homes portrays the pain and joy of their reunion without sentimentality, revealing that everything Richard has experienced is merely the prelude to this powerful reconnection. Homes’ novel has the elusive quality of a dream whose fragmentary images lodge in the brain, destined to surface at random moments. While it may not fulfill the extravagant promise of its title, it’s an arresting and emotionally satisfying story that effectively captures some of the essence of our fractured lives. Harvey Freedenberg writes from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

In 1999, A.M. Homes told an interviewer, Life is incredibly surrealistic. Especially where I live, in New York City, the weirdest things happen every day. Substitute Los Angeles for New York City, and that observation provides an apt thumbnail sketch of her latest novel, This…
Memoir

The power of the word

Review by bookpagedev

An Iranian writer recalls her youth in the Land of No’ It is perhaps the direst disaster that can befall a writer: the loss of his or her cherished books, diaries, notebooks, the ultimate evidence of the writer’s existence, wiped out. It means the severing of crucial personal relationships, perhaps not yet articulated or even fully comprehended, from the words and writers of the past. It means a re-creation, in the purest sense, of the individual. And yet this immolation sometimes works the phoenix trick. This blow struck Roya Hakakian when she was 17, the youngest in a once-prosperous Jewish family in Iran on the verge of revolution. Looking back on that frightening era more than 20 years later, she captures her experiences in a haunting memoir, Journey from the Land of No: A Girlhood Caught in Revolutionary Iran.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God” . . . and the word created order out of chaos. Religion aside, the first phrases of Genesis are a succinct and powerful metaphor for the act of writing. The word is the expression of the essential self, and the manner in which we re-create our universe. Hakakian thought she had understood pretty well the upheaval of the late 1970s and early ’80s in her native Iran the deposing of the Shah, the increasing sway and eventual consolidation of power by the Ayatollah Khomeini and the purges that followed but once she began to write about that time, the act of writing both clarified and reshaped those events.

“Everything came into focus,” she said in a recent interview, “and I was able to make sense of things I thought were unconnected. You get engaged with your own memories, as if they were discrete. You don’t think how to present them, how they should be arranged, what context they should be in.” She also discovered how thoroughly the power of the word had affected her life. Hakakian, who has written poetry in Persian and translated the poems of Emily Dickinson (and who writes with the automatic rhythm of a poet), early on discovered that storytelling was a kind of code, and that she could bring into being a whole world just by writing in her notebook. She also discovered that despotism fears the Word (she tells a story of how she and her friends escaped into the mountains with books of poetry only to discover they had been censored before printing) and that the crudest form of the Word the splashing of the graffiti “Johoud,” which meant both “Jew” and “dirty,” on the wall of their home could be a terrible weapon.

Finally, in one of the most engaging sections of the book, she meets the teacher who will inspire her, the Harpo Marx-ish Mrs. Arman, who encourages her not only to write but also to find the great refuge that is literature.

That she owes much of her intellectual fearlessness to her upbringing is clear. First one and then all three of her brothers must eventually flee to America for anti-Shah activities, and when an almost cartoonishly fundamentalist Muslim takes over as principal of her school, Roya discovers that using words to make fun of the mini-tyrant empowers her and endears her to her fellow pupils.

It is also clear from her memoir that her family’s religion was central to her life in Tehran, and to the reversal of fortune they encounter. But oddly, it was something of a surprise to Hakakian. “I never thought that having been a Jew had played a part in who I was until I finished the book,” she says, “and if asked, I don’t think I would be able to articulate it, but I was clearly affected by being raised as a Jew. I sat down to write as a secular Iranian girl who had witnessed a revolution, but when I finished I realized how much more there was to the story.” It was a complex, often confusing identity. Her family seemed truly observant only at Passover, and yet it violently opposed her uncle’s going outside the religion to marry a Muslim woman. The Jewish Iranian Students Organization was where Roya and her friends spent their evenings, but it was founded to hurry the assimilation of Jews into secular Iranian society. There they mimeographed editorials about the war with Iraq, the perfidy of the U.S. and even the struggles of the Palestinians under the “Zionists.” And despite the enthusiasm with which the Jews of Tehran embrace the post-Shah regime, they quickly become familiarly and ominously segregated. Non-Muslims are ordered to drink from designated water fountains. Non-Muslim shop owners must display signs in the windows identifying the business as such; Jewish doctors who rush to treat wounded soldiers are rejected as “dirty.” And by the time her father seeks to renew their passports, they are rejected.

Finally comes the ultimate blow, and one that is delivered, in the name of her safety, by her own father. He burns Roya’s notebooks, her records, her Dostoyevsky and Jane Austen. “It is time,” her father says, with the heavy drumbeat of a concerto’s climax, “we leave for America.” Since coming to the U.S., Hakakian has worked as an associate producer at “60 Minutes” and directed several documentaries, including the critically admired “Armed and Innocent,” about child soldiers in Africa.

Hakakian now lives just outside New Haven, and occasionally contributes essays to Connecticut Public Radio. Though she has begun work on another book, she says it is not about Iran. Eve Zibart is a writer for The Washington Post and the author of numerous books, including The Unofficial Guide to New York City.

An Iranian writer recalls her youth in the Land of No' It is perhaps the direst disaster that can befall a writer: the loss of his or her cherished books, diaries, notebooks, the ultimate evidence of the writer's existence, wiped out. It means the severing…
Children's & YA

Here I am at Camp Granada

Review by bookpagedev

Summer camp can be a wonderful experience especially for the camper’s parents, who are free to enjoy a few blissfully peaceful weeks at home. For the camper, though, this summer ritual isn’t always a fun-filled romp in the great outdoors, especially if homesickness sets in.

Television writer Alan Sherman immortalized the lows (and highs) of summer camp in 1963 with his comedy song “Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah,” the hilarious ode of a reluctant camper set to the tune of Ponchielli’s classical “Dance of the Hours.” A hit record more than 40 years ago, the song has now been adapted into a picture book that captures all the wit and homesick angst of Sherman’s classic parody.

Constructed as a letter home from a weary young camper, the book reveals that life at Camp Granada isn’t quite what our narrator had hoped. First, there’s the never-ending rain, then the alligator-infested lake and the bullying tactics of the head coach. As our camper tells it, his buddies have it even worse than he does one has poison ivy, while another has ptomaine poisoning from the camp food. Lest parents fear that Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah will scare the daylights out of prospective campers, we’ll reveal that things soon take a turn for the better at Camp Granada. (“Wait a minute/it stopped hailing/guys are swimming/guys are sailing!”) Rich and imaginative illustrations by Jack E. Davis bring Sherman’s lyrics to life and add a new dimension to this familiar tale. In one scene a family of ducks makes its way through the rain-soaked campgrounds; in another a huge grasshopper feasts on the cookie of an unsuspecting camper. The wide-eyed, snaggled-tooth narrator seems befuddled by it all.

Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah is a comical delight for counselors, campers and siblings and a nostalgic treat for parents who remember the song on which it is based. Lynn Green’s son, William, is finishing up two weeks at Camp Rockmont and he still hasn’t written a letter home.

Summer camp can be a wonderful experience especially for the camper's parents, who are free to enjoy a few blissfully peaceful weeks at home. For the camper, though, this summer ritual isn't always a fun-filled romp in the great outdoors, especially if homesickness sets in.

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