This is a very poetic and complex book, and not meant for a quick read, I think. And for me what was strong was the mother and daughter relationship and the relationship the geography had to do with the girl's budding sexuality, her identity, and inner landscape. But it not for everybody. Mainly because it doesn't strive to provide more of the standard political answers we are so used to when anyone writes about the Middle East. Instead it's about people, what they are as individuals and their desperate search for a personal identity against this backdrop which threatens to deprive them of their separate personhood. It is very, very sexual and not for tepid hearts and souls, you have to be sort of brave to face what Skolkin-Smith tells us about sexuality, mothers and daughters and the inner life of adolescents. But if you're willing to go into those depths it an immensely satisfying book which doesn't settle for simple questions or answers. And one of the best I've read in a long, long time.