Despite its exotic milieu, the characters and events of the book will seem strangely familiar to all of us who have lived through the difficult process of growing up. This may be an Iranian family, but readers everywhere will be able to identify with the narrator's rivalries with his brother, the summertime car trips, the painful pangs of first love, disastrous dinner parties at home, and the dark shadows that death casts on daily life.
The book also gives readers a colorful account of living through a difficult political climate through the eyes of a young boy; a perspective beyond what appears on TV news and daily headlines, and an interesting comment on the role of American pop culture in a Third World country.
