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A movie and book review blog

  • Reading films, watching books,....
  • Mind candy in the dark
  • All the books left to read...

Apr 30, 2004

  • 4/30/2004 12:03:00 PM
Leila is a young Iranian woman, happily married to Reza living somewhere in urban Iran. All is roses and pearls till the couple realize that Leila cannot have a child, not that Reza is desperate to have one. The more conservative mother-in-law and aunt-in-law decides that Reza should remarry in order to have progeny. Leila meekly agrees to this and goes along with the proceedings.

To an extent I can understand the Leila's submissiveness to this decision considering the society she was born and brought up in expected her to be like that. What I don't understand is even though his wife agreed to his mother's decision of taking a second wife, why he himself went ahead with it although reluctantly? Add to this the fact that Reza's father and his three sisters were totally opposed to his second marriage. Its slow moving at times, I don't understand the mind games of the two main characters - Leila and Reza. One thing I learnt from the movie is Iranian cities are very modern - wide highways, turnabouts, ramps, modern apartments, cars and ladies in black chador.

Apr 28, 2004

  • 4/28/2004 11:54:00 AM
I bought this book for in-flight reading for a long flight from NYC to Seattle and then onto Anchorage. Finished it by the time we touched down. Set in London, it is about a middle-aged literary editor, Rose. As is anticipated by the title, it is about the mid-life crisis she undergoes.

I selected it from the rows of best-sellers at the airport kiosk because I thought it was the story of an everyday woman, some of us who have been thru' such things and some of us will get to that age in the future. Its an ordinary story, narrated in a way that makes you want to read. The setting could have been anywhere - London, New York, Tokyo or Rio. To me it feels like a story about women by a woman, for there are other interesting female characters in the story as well. An easy read, we should be hearing more about Elizabeth Buchan on this side of the Atlantic soon.
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