[stylist] could anyone read this please?

[Vejas Vasiliauskas]

Hi All,
I have to write a newspaper book review on the memoir that I read 
for school.  I have almost two weeks to do it.  Because I didn't 
particularly care for my book, I decided to write a negative 
review.  (And yes, despite the fact that I enjoy using British 
spelling this review is strictly American).  It seems like many 
newspaper reviews just rave about how absolutely AMAZING a book 
is.  It doesn't matter to me that you haven't read the book, I am 
just looking for structural suggesttions.  I am also more than 
happy to clarify anything about what I have written.  What I have 
written below is just a very rough draft from a book review 
beginner.
Thank you for all suggesttions.
Vejas
Immigrant by Sally Bennett
When I found out that I had to read a memoir, I decided that I 
wanted to read one about someone from another country.  Learning 
about other cultures has always been an interest of mine.  I was 
very excited to find that this author was from England, because I 
have always been interested in everything about the UK, such as 
its culture and its differences in language compared with 
American English. 
The author, Sally Bennett, was born in 1932 in Yorkshire, 
England.  She then moved to Spain at age 1 because  her mother 
had an affair with an American man named Jack Pratt, who was 
living there at the time.  After a while they moved to Portugal.  
While in Portugal, Sally gained a little sister, and her 
stepfather left the family.  Sally, her mother and sister moved 
to Portugal, and then to Georgia in the United States, then later 
back to Portugal, the UK and finally back to the US, this time in 
Virginia, where she finished high school.  She has been living in 
America ever since.
As one might assume, Sally's life was far from a party.  She only 
very occasionally had a chance to see her father in England, and 
her relationship with her mother, who was not the most maternal 
of women, was not helped by the oblious cultural divide that came 
with growing up in two countries-even ones with the same 
language.  She says of her general experience as an immigrant: "I 
understand the immigrant's seemingly perverse longing for a place 
called home, a siren song that often precludes creating a happier 
life in new surroundings.  The familiar voices, customs, and 
landscape set down in infancy seem normal and right.  Whatever 
comes later, after language allows us to shape our world, 
determines the course of our lives, but our emotions are forever 
washed in these earliest impressions." (3).
I do not know if I would recommend this book to anyone.  While 
Sally Bennett's family history is interesting, the book lacks 
lots of cultural detail, and the writing is a bit banal.  
However, the writer cannot be blamed completely for this.  While 
she definitely could have focused more on the differences between 
growing up in England versus growing up in America, she herself 
did not receive the most culturally diverse experience.  Her life 
in England, limited to short breaks with her father and a very 
small period living with her mother, did not give her much time 
to really experience culture.  While she lived in Portugal for a 
rather long time, her family always mingled with the English 
expat community, and the book fails to mention anything about 
Portugese or Spanish culture, which may have been something she 
never bothered to care about while there.  Another thing to keep 
in mind about this book is that the author was born in 1932 and 
the book was just published in 2013.  While the mind of an 
81-year-old can still be sharp, she will not have the vivid 
memories that she would still have had in her twenties and 
thirties.
Another aspect of the book that really did not sit well with me 
is that there are two chapters in which Sally's mother, Sylvia, 
is portrayed in the third-person narrative as a teenage girl.  
While I have a great relationship with my parents and know quite 
a lot about their families, I would not know enough about their 
school lives in order to accurately write two chapters about them 
as teenagers, especially if my parents were not alive for me to 
ask them any questions that come up.  This must mean that, while 
some of the foundation material for these chapters is accurate, 
much of it was just added detail which the author created as 
fillers.  One very particularly  unrealistic character 
description in these chapters is that of Grace, Sylvia's best 
friend while attending boarding school during the Victorian era.  
The author never says the exact words, but it is implied by the 
ones she does use that Grace is gay.  Grace would often openly 
tell her best friend Sylvia, "I love you." As we now live in a 
time when people are finding it hard to come out and even commit 
suicide because of it, it seems strange that a girl in 1900 will 
be so open about her feelings.
Do I regret reading this book? No; I did find the story of 
Sally's family interesting and the few bits of cultural 
differences enticing.  Therefore, I shall leave it up to the 
reader of this review to decide whether or not this book is worth 
their time.