I read this book several years ago and I no longer own it. I do remember that the girl's mother was a divorced tomboy who never grew out of it; she lifts weights and does other masculine things. Marleen is a freak and the little old ladies in her neighborhood are always gossiping and they don't like her. I wasn't a big fan of the book at the time, but I think that I would like to read it again now. I'm 15 and I could probably understand it better. Oh, and there's something about an older guy and his car.

This volume consists of a collection of essays about changing conceptions of women's roles in Egypt and Iran since the Nineteenth Century. On the whole, the articles are well researched and well written. However, rather than giving a single overall view of the subject, they tend to focus on very specific topics, such as the representation of Joan of Arc in Egyptian popular literature in the early part of the Twentieth Century or the education and family background of A'isha Taymur, a Nineteenth Century Egyptian poet. If the particular subject matter of the articles appeals to your interests, you will find the book very enjoyable. Otherwise, it's not exactly engaging reading.

I listened to the first half hour of the tape before turning it off and throwing it away. The narration is awful and the content (if you can call it that) is non-existent. You're much better off purchasing something like the "Pretty Good Joke Tape."

Content is excellent - but a professional narrator would have made the tape far more interesting. Lila Green speaks so slowly and unnaturally that it acts as a serious distraction to the valuable material she is trying to present.

With the amount of animosity, hurt, regret and anger that is involved in a divorce situation I find it hard to believe that someone published this book. The hurt that any five year old would feel at her father's stupidity is bad enough, but to write a book about it? This is PAS at its best.
Yes, the father should be ashamed of himself (I am going to assume this was based on a true story), but so should whoever told her daughter that her father didn't want her anymore. In the real experiences of many fathers it is the mother who refuses to ALLOW the father to have a relationship with his children - not the other way around.
In divorce there is enough blame to go around, the object of our society should be to protect the children from the ugliness portrayed by adults, not add to it.

I ran across this book in a local dollar store. Morbidly curious, I stood there and read it. While it's true that every life is different, and children experience many forms of family situation, it was still sickening to read about how the character's mother told her that Daddy left because "he didn't want a family anymore"; or that the father, absent from his daughters' lives for less than 5 years, didn't recognize them at all. This book sends the message to kids that if divorced parents remarry, only the "new" family is loved. I'm very sorry for those people for whom this may be true, but there are many, many stepfamilies out there who DO incorporate, welcome, and include children from previous and current marriages. I shudder to think of stepchildren who will read this book, and remember its lessons when a new baby is born.