Digging to America

February 27, 2006
Tyler (Breathing Lessons
) encompasses the collision of cultures without losing her sharp focus on the daily dramas of modern family life in her 17th novel. When Bitsy and Brad Donaldson and Sami and Ziba Yazdan both adopt Korean infant girls, their chance encounter at the Baltimore airport the day their daughters arrive marks the start of a long, intense if sometimes awkward friendship. Sami's mother, Maryam Yazdan, who carefully preserves her exotic "outsiderness" despite having emigrated from Iran almost 40 years earlier, is frequently perplexed by her son and daughter-in-law's ongoing relationship with the loud, opinionated, unapologetically American Donaldsons. When Bitsy's recently widowed father, Dave, endearingly falls in love with Maryam, she must come to terms with what it means to be part of a culture and a country. Stretching from the babies' arrival in 1997 until 2004, the novel is punctuated by each year's Arrival Party, a tradition manufactured and comically upheld by Bitsy; the annual festivities gradually reveal the families' evolving connections. Though the novel's perspective shifts among characters, Maryam is at the narrative and emotional heart of the touching, humorous story, as she reluctantly realizes that there may be a place in her heart for new friends, new loves and her new country after all.

January 1, 2007
British historian Robert Tombs (French history, Cambridge Univ.) and the French-born Isabelle Tombs (French, Foreign & Commonwealth Office), whose doctorate is in modern British history, have attempted a vast and ambitious projectto weave together the complex tale of British-French interaction, rivalry, and cultural exchange across the last three centuries. Although utilizing a standard chronology and the usual political high-water marks like war and revolution, this is not a standard political history but a fascinating collection of reflections upon the changing nature of the British-French relationship. Maps, charts, cartoons, graphs, advertisements, and images of various kinds enrich the presentation, freshening familiar tales like Anglo-French rivalry in the New World. Fashion, art, and literature provide further examples of cultural exchange, e.g., the authors show how the work of Shakespeare has served as a "weathervane" for French attitudes toward English culture. The themes of rivalry and respect, as well as alliance and collision, are carried to the present, with discussions of how both the European Union and the Iraq War have provided opportunities for interaction and separation. Both British and French national identity, the authors conclude, have been created and shaped by this rivalry and connection. An impressive book that will delight scholars and informed lay readers alike; recommended for academic collections and large public libraries.Marie Marmo Mullaney, Caldwell Coll., NJ

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