The Good Daughter : A Memoir of My Mother's Hidden Life (Hardcover)

from SeriousGrace

There is a third party detachment to the way Darznik tells her mother's story. It's cool and aloof, without personal reaction or reflection. The Good Daughter reads like a novel because Darznik does not offer us any emotion. She includes so many fly-on-the-wall details about her mother's first ma...

from reluctantm

A quick read. Passable as an autobiography but there are times when the narrative doesn't flow particularly well and it starts to feel a lot like "and then this happened and then this happened and then this happened". As the narrator is retelling a story told to her for the majority of the book, ...

from Cariola

Jasmin Darznik's The Good Daughter: A Memoir of My Mother's Secret Life reminded me of one of my own family stories. Although my great-grandmother came from a country that treated women much better than Iran (Ireland), she, too, had secrets that the social standards at the time (the 1880s) forced...

from lansum

If you liked this book, I'd recommend Across Many Mountains: A Tibetan Family's Epic Journey from Oppression to Freedom, by Yangzom Brauen. Both are well-written narratives about generations of courageous women escaping from oppression and, sometimes, abuse. They have to make adjustments to their...

from bhowell

This book took some time to arrive but I am glad it did. I found the first part of the book difficult to read because of the sickening abuse of children, in particular, the author's mother. A forced marriage of a 13 year old child to a sadistic monster takes place while relatives dance and sing, ...