Shutterbabe

Rating:
Summary: I tore through Shutterbabe in two days.
Review: Deborah Kogan is funny and passionate and articulate about things that matter. Very topical with Afghanistan and the murder of Daniel Pearl.
Her technique of jumping ahead in the story so we're in the dark, then backing up and filling in the details is very successful. The Rumanian orphanage scene is heartbreaking. Ironically, although I understood her decision to retire from photojournalism (my wife is semi-retired from photography to raise our two children), the pages describing her less exciting life were less exciting. It must have been hard to write knowing that some day her children will read it. "And this chapter is about when Mommy got raped..." Tough, but they'll be proud of her.

Rating:
Summary: I tore through Shutterbabe in two days.
Review: Deborah Kogan is funny and passionate and articulate about things that matter. Very topical with Afghanistan and the murder of Daniel Pearl.
Her technique of jumping ahead in the story so we're in the dark, then backing up and filling in the details is very successful. The Rumanian orphanage scene is heartbreaking. Ironically, although I understood her decision to retire from photojournalism (my wife is semi-retired from photography to raise our two children), the pages describing her less exciting life were less exciting. It must have been hard to write knowing that some day her children will read it. "And this chapter is about when Mommy got raped..." Tough, but they'll be proud of her.

Rating:
Summary: the great wide world, like many more should see it
Review: entertaining, witty and, most of all, very real... coming from Romania - and hey, we were probably in the same plaza a few times, in Bucharest - i can testify :-) that her insight in the romanian psyche and overall situation is objective and appropriate. this means i can trust her on the accounts of her other stories! what i started to read as a semi-fictional book - after all, we all like to embellish our stories, isn't it? - has become some sort of a documentary source... which is a thing i can tell about very few books i read...
and since i never mastered the courage to drop off school and pick up my camera and go, i want to thank her for being one of the people out there, fighting (a little bit of) my battles, too...