eshchory

I had hoped this would be an educational and interesting account of Iraq during the war, from a young adult's point of view.
Instead it was a weakly written propaganda piece aimed at pandering to Western sensibilities without giving any real information or a sense of time and place.

Some reviewers compare it to The Diary of Anne Frank. Anne Frank's diary is an honest, heartfelt and unselfconscious account. We get Anne Frank warts and all.

Thura rarely describes her own feelings or those of her friends and family. She relays a rather superficial narrative of the events going on around her without showing even an immature insight into what is happening to her family and her country but does manage to include a few clumsy pleas for our sympathy.

I feel truly sorry for anyone, especially a child, having to suffer through the Iraq war but rather than eliciting my sympathy Thura's diary left me irritated by a spoilt middle class teenager who cynically tried to profit from a terrible situation.

Extremely disappointing.