I loved/lived this book in the 24 hours in which I devoured it. I have known the author of this book since I was in sixth grade at TASIS. She was a couple of years older than me and really into A-ha. I remember telling me they were my favorite band and she asked me when Morten Harket's birthday was and I was so embarrassed, realizing that I wasn't a real fan. Ever since then I never say anything is my favorite, lest I be asked for obscure information on the subject. ANYWAY. As a child I looked up to her, and later, in college I got to know and like her much better, although we were never very close, she's been in the periphery of my life for about 30 years. I know her family and friends and she knows mine, so I realize that me gushing over her book might be biased just a tinge, but I still thing it's amazing on any level. She writes with such incredible detail that I can see and smell everything as it's happening in the story. In part, it is because she is writing about Athens and being from there and elsewhere, as we all were at TASIS and ACS. The time she spends at TASIS in her book brought back memories of things I hadn't visited since they happened in 1989. She writes the letter as though out were a letter to her unscrupulous father (think Boris' father in The Goldfinch), and had me on the verge of tears, my heart in my throat, throughout. Reading the book back in Greece with the cicadas screaming in the background imbued the whole experience with an explosive nostalgia for me. The night after I read it I dreamed that my friends and family had to sacrifice me so that Mary Sexson (a family friend that we met at the same time that Maria entered my life, or I entered hers) could become president of the United States.
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