Huzzah! I did not give up so soon! I have a more or less constant stream of quality YA lit coming at me from Owen's side of the library, so I was able to finish another one in a relatively timely manner. Sort of.
This is a graphic memoir that spans the childhood of the author. She lives in Iran during the Islamic revolution/Iran-Iraq war. This is another period of history I didn't previously know much about. Chances are, most of history is something I don't know much about. Ok, so that wasn't a very astute statement, but anyway, I was occasionally confused, as it's one of those books where the protagonist is a kid who tells things as they understood them at the time, not with the clarifying benefit of hindsight.
I really liked the hearing of the horrors of war through her lens of inexperience, though, despite the confusion. It reminded me of what I've heard about that Foer book about 9/11 that I haven't read. Occasionally it did leave me wanting more information, but when things got intense (which happened all the time- you barely have time to get to know a few of the characters before they get killed off), it is sobering to watch these things happen through the eyes of a child.
This is one of those books that makes me wish I knew more than 1.5 languages, because I could tell there were things lost in the translation from the original French. Graphic novels are full of short, sometimes disjointed sentences anyway, and the translation was sometimes awkward, but that isn't the book's fault.
I didn't particularly identify with Marjane much, as I was not a particularly political kid. I did think she was pretty endearing, though, mouthing off to her extremist teachers and talking to both God and Marx at night.
The art was cool, too. It would be pretty disappointing to read a graphic novel and
not like the art, actually, but I found the simplicity of the black and white appealing. I watched most of the movie version of this book the other day, also. The movie also covered the sequel to the book I read, but I've not read that yet. The movie's art was the same as in the book, except moving, so I liked watching it a lot. The plot moved kind of fast and left things out, which was too bad, but that usually happens with film adaptations anyway. The swirly prettiness of the movie mostly made up for it, but not entirely. I want to read the second one now, but I probably won't do it right away.
I spend a lot of time griping about American politics. So yeah, a lot of things are wildly messed up in my country. But when you're reading about people getting arrested for having playing cards and executed for possibly being maybe a little Communist, and you yourself live in a country in which
people can manufacture and sell presidential shaped sex toys on the internet, it sort of puts things into perspective.
Pages: 153
Time: Jan 14-18
Rating: 7
