by Sahar Deligani
This book is about life in Iran from 1983 to the present and how the violence inflicted on citizens by the government affected the families.
The story begins in prison. A young activist gives birth in the prison and is allowed to keep her baby for a while. All the other women find joy in the arrival of the baby and put aside their bickering and jealousy to make things for the baby and look after the baby. Eventually the baby is taken away from the woman and sent to her parents.
The woman eventually gets out of prison but her husband remains in prison. She brings the child to see him a few times. She hopes he will eventually be released but one day she is notified that he is dead (he has been executed).
The story switches in time to before the woman is released from prison. The woman's mother, sister and father are looking after her children and also two children from other imprisoned family members.
The woman decides to leave Iran but it takes 10 years for her to get a visa for Italy. She tells her daughter that her husband died from cancer. She cannot bear to tell her the truth. Nor can she stand to live in Italy. She eventually leaves her daughter behind and returns to Iran.
We then meet the young children who were cared for by the woman's family. They are grown now, one of them is studying in the U.S.
She returns to Iran to see a boy she loved. They had wanted to marry but he didn't want to leave Iran and she did. She is hurt that he has remarried. She wonders if he remembers there passion and despite the fact that she is engaged to be married shortly she would be willing to restart the relationship. The young man avoids this. The young children remember fondly the two strong women, the grandmother and the daughter who looked after them. In fact several of them did not want to go to their real mothers when they returned because they didn't know who they were. These mother's struggle to develop close relationships with their children.
The young man is shocked to hear how this generation of young people have also been protesting and have been attacked and imprisoned by the authorities. She feels disconnected from the action and perhaps sad to not have been part of it.
Meanwhile in Italy, the daughter who remained there has met an Iranian immigrant to Italy. They are having an affair. He tells her that he too was involved in the riots, as was his father. She too is shocked to realize that she is seeing someone who participated in what she had only watched on the Internet. When she finds out that the man's father was originally a guard she wants to draw away from him. Was this man responsible for her father's death. Even if he wasn't he was part of the establishment that created the prisons and engaged in the torture. She is wrestling about what to do in this relationship.
She returns to Iran and confronts her mother about the truth of her father's death and her mother confesses that she lied. The girl is furious at her mother for not telling her the truth. She feels she was entitled to the truth however unpleasant.
This was a very difficult book to read, the tragedies, the sadness were very hard to read about. However. it is certainly an important story and the author did a superb job of portraying the climate and family tragedies in Iran.
Sunday, 2 November 2014
A Bitter Truth
by Charles Todd
This is the third mystery featuring the WWI nurse, Bess Crawford.
The story starts with Bess returning on leave from the front in France. She finds a woman huddled on the front steps of the boarding house where she lives. The woman has a large bruise on her face. Bess convinces the woman to come inside to get warm.
The woman eventually tells Bess that she has run away from her husband because he hit her following an argument. She doesn't know what to do but is afraid to go home. She finally agrees to go home if Bess will accompany her. Bess feels that she should be visiting her parents but agrees to take the time to see the woman home. She only plans to spend one night at the woman's home in the country.
However, one of the visitors at the house is found murdered near the cemetery in the church yard and Bess is required to stay by the police. She finds out that the woman's husband's family has never recovered from the death of the man's sister when she was a little girl. The dead man had had an argument with the woman's husband on the night before he was killed. He insisted that he had seen a young orphan in France who looked like the husband's dead sister -- implication - the child is the man's.
One of the people suspected of the murder is a blind man whom the woman had been reading to. Her husband suspects that there is more to the relationship than reading. The blind man disappears.
The woman asks Bess to try to find this child when she is in France and with the help of an Australian soldier she nursed to health she is able to find the home where the girl is being cared for by nuns. She runs into the woman's husband but doesn't admit she has found the girl. Things get even more complicated when Bess learns that the Australian soldier has smuggled the young girl into England.
The woman and her husband cannot seem to overcome their distrust of each other. At one point the man's mother admits to the murders to take suspicion off her husband. However, Bess and her family friend eventually figure out that the murderer is a local police officer who killed the two men because they served on a court martial against him.
The story was okay but I really didn't have any sympathy for the woman. She seemed to be quite clueless, acting on impulse with little thought of the consequences for her or others.
This is the third mystery featuring the WWI nurse, Bess Crawford.
The story starts with Bess returning on leave from the front in France. She finds a woman huddled on the front steps of the boarding house where she lives. The woman has a large bruise on her face. Bess convinces the woman to come inside to get warm.
The woman eventually tells Bess that she has run away from her husband because he hit her following an argument. She doesn't know what to do but is afraid to go home. She finally agrees to go home if Bess will accompany her. Bess feels that she should be visiting her parents but agrees to take the time to see the woman home. She only plans to spend one night at the woman's home in the country.
However, one of the visitors at the house is found murdered near the cemetery in the church yard and Bess is required to stay by the police. She finds out that the woman's husband's family has never recovered from the death of the man's sister when she was a little girl. The dead man had had an argument with the woman's husband on the night before he was killed. He insisted that he had seen a young orphan in France who looked like the husband's dead sister -- implication - the child is the man's.
One of the people suspected of the murder is a blind man whom the woman had been reading to. Her husband suspects that there is more to the relationship than reading. The blind man disappears.
The woman asks Bess to try to find this child when she is in France and with the help of an Australian soldier she nursed to health she is able to find the home where the girl is being cared for by nuns. She runs into the woman's husband but doesn't admit she has found the girl. Things get even more complicated when Bess learns that the Australian soldier has smuggled the young girl into England.
The woman and her husband cannot seem to overcome their distrust of each other. At one point the man's mother admits to the murders to take suspicion off her husband. However, Bess and her family friend eventually figure out that the murderer is a local police officer who killed the two men because they served on a court martial against him.
The story was okay but I really didn't have any sympathy for the woman. She seemed to be quite clueless, acting on impulse with little thought of the consequences for her or others.
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