Farangi Girl
Growing up in Iran: a daughter's story
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4.6 • 9 Ratings
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- $5.99
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- $5.99
Publisher Description
Ashley Dartnell's mother was a glamorous American, her father a dashing Englishman, each trying to slough off their past and upgrade to a more romantic and exotic present in Iran. As the story starts, Ashley is eight years old and living in Tehran in the 1960s: the Shah was in power, life for Westerners was rich and privileged. But somehow it didn't all add up to a fairytale. There were bankruptcies and prisons, betrayals and lovers, lies and evasions. And throughout it all, Ashley's passionate and strong-willed mother, Genie. Stories of mothers and daughters are some of the most compelling in contemporary memoir, from The Liar's Club and The Glass Castle to Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight and Bad Blood. Farangi Girl deserves to be in their company. It's an honest and endlessly recognisable portrait of a mother by a daughter who loved her (and was loved in return). Against this extraordinary background, Ashley's journey into adulthood was more helter-skelter than most and this portrait of a bewitching and endlessly inventive mother is surprising and deeply moving.
Customer Reviews
Fascinating and powerful
This is an autobiography of the childhood of an American girl raised in Iran that is initriguing and exotic, and at the same time painful and sometimes heartbreaking. The story is compelling; it is hard to put this book down, and it is remarkable to see what this young woman overcame. On another level it is a pleasure to read for the sheer beauty of the writing. This is the kind of book in which the reader can re-read and savor sentences and paragraphs for the pure appreciation of the simplicity and clarity of expression, the artful choice the perfect word, and the beauty of a well-turned — though never showy — phrase.
Farangi Girl
I don't think I could have survived what these kids did. Having also lived in Iran as a child, I experienced the good life that Americans had there in the 60's. Dartnell's book showed me the side of Iran that I didn't see, while bringing back to life the bright beautiful delicious country Iran was. Writing of her parents terrible parenting so matter of factly, Dartnell paints a poignant unforgettable picture of the human spirit at its best.