Accomplished and expressive language permeates this coming-of-age memoir. Born in 1936, the author (Gorgeous Chaos
), an award-winning poet, was the son of an Iraqi mother and a Syrian mother, and raised in an Arabic-speaking, Sephardic household in Brooklyn. His memories, sparked by a trove of unsent letters written by his father, capture the tensions between his parents (whose marriage had been arranged), and evokes a childhood, shared with younger brother, Nat, and a sister, Renee, that was marked by his mother's fearfulness of the world outside (she never learned English). Marshall provides mouth-watering descriptions of Arabic meals and complex portraits of his extended family. Writing with insight and humor, he provides sharp visual sketches of baseball summers, trips to Coney Island and his unrequited love for a Sicilian classmate in elementary school. At the heart of this story is Marshall's disenchantment with religion, the growing appeal of science and his commitment to poetry, which temporarily estranged him from his background. When he planned to marry a Christian, Renee, on behalf of the family, offered his fiancée $10,000 to call off the wedding. Decades later, a trip Marshall took with Renee (now terminally ill with cancer) and Nat is lovingly recounted. 8 b&w photos not seen by PW.
(Oct.)
