[stylist] could anyone read this please?

[Pagan Tree]

Vejas, This is going to sound very strange I am sure. But will you call me
tomorrow please? My number is (208)339-2430. I have something to ask you
from the officers and board of the Writers Division.  Um, I am in Pacific
time. I do not know where you are, but I will be home in the afternoon and
available after that.
This is not an April Fools joke. I promise you, it really is important.
Thanks, Eve Sanchez

On Wed, Apr 1, 2015 at 9:21 PM, Vejas Vasiliauskas via stylist <
stylist at nfbnet.org> wrote:

> 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.
>
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