[stylist] could anyone read this please?

[Jacobson, Shawn D]

Vejas

As someone who appreciates a good book review (and who has toyed with writing them), I was interested to see what you had written.

My experience is that different book reviewers have different philosophies about writing negative reviews.  The reviewer for Analog magazine does not write them because he feels his purpose is to turn people on to good books.  Other reviewers will write negative reviews.  Keep the purpose of your review in mind.  It looks like you're purpose is to say that this book was not according to my taste and this is why.

You really don't need the last sentence since the reader will make his own decision anyway.

Otherwise, a good first effort.

Shawn
-----Original Message-----
From: stylist [mailto:stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Vejas Vasiliauskas via stylist
Sent: Thursday, April 02, 2015 12:21 AM
To: stylist at nfbnet.org
Subject: [stylist] could anyone read this please?

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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