Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books by Azar NafisiMy rating: 2 of 5 stars
It is always hard to write reviews on memoirs because you don't want to rate and review the a person's experience. Part of your rating is subjective and has to do with your enjoyment of the book, and this just wasn't for me. It was repetitive at times, discussing the same books and concepts over, and as it is a memoir it only gives the author's point of view on things. I found it hard to stay engaged with her writing style as she tells her story. The structure of the work is intellectual on one page, philosophical on the next page, political on the next page, and they are eating ice cream on the next page. This style of jumping around doesn't work for me, especially when dealing with intense literary and political topics.
I expected this to me more about the "bookclub" and while Nafisi does interweave discussions about the books into this, this is more her memoir about the political climate and treatment of women in Tehran. Now I will say I had no idea what I was getting into when I started this, so maybe I should have done more homework. I did learn a lot, but it wasn't what I was expecting. Also, I haven't read many of her favorite works and authors, so maybe I would have been able to follow along with her discussions had I actually read Lolita and some of the other works she talks about. She writes those parts as though she were teaching her university students, and I felt like I hadn't done my homework.
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