Lucette Lagnado’s second memoir that mainly deals with her mother left me cold. With the scarcity of dialogue, the book becomes a series of “telling” episodes rather than “showing”, causing the reader to feel distanced. Too much ground was covered between the sections about growing up as a Jewish child in Cairo along with illnesses of the writer and both her parents and adjusting to their immigration to America. Despite an attempt to tie things together at the end, the title The Arrogant Years never gets satisfactorily explained. ( )

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As readers of Andre Aciman's wonderful memoir Out of Egypt will know, Egypt was until the 1950s home of a Levantine Jewish community that lived for most of its history comparatively well integrated and respected in this part of the world.

Multi-cultural Cairo and Alexandria were at that time home to many religious and ethnic minorities that over the centuries had learned to cope with each other in a - mostly - peaceful way. Many members of the Jewish community like the Cattaui family had risen to great wealth and affluence. With the rise of Egyptian nationalism, the wars in 1948 and 1956 and the erection of an authoritarian regime of officers under the leadership of Nasser, this period came abruptly to an end. The Jews were no longer welcome in Egypt and had to leave, usually with very little except their lives and a few clothes.

This is the historical backdrop of two books of memoirs by Lucette Lagnado, The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit and The Arrogant Years. Lagnado, a journalist working for major newspapers like the Wall Street Journal, was born in Egypt, where she spent her first years before emigrating via France to the US with her parents and siblings.

The books are covering roughly a century. Whereas The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit focuses mainly on her father, The Arrogant Years is mainly devoted to the life of the author's mother. Although the two works cover the same period, Lagnado avoids redundancy as much as possible which makes both books worth reading.

The author's father, Leon, was obviously a larger-than-life figure: he was very tall, good-looking, with impeccable manners and a talent for languages; a boulevardier that liked to go out every evening until late at night; a business man that was so secretive about his business that even his close family members had no idea if his business was thriving or if he was on the verge of bankruptcy; a womanizer that was rumored to have had many affairs (including the charismatic singer Om Kalthoum); a man that was at home with the British officers in Cairo during WWII who dubbed him "the Captain"; but at the same time a devout Jew who observed all rules of his creed and was praying every day in the synagogue; a patriarch with a very traditional mindset when it came to the role of women in the family; but at the same time a very kind and patient father (especially with his youngest daughter, the author).

Edith, the author's mother, was considerably younger than her husband. Although her background was very different from Leon's - her family was very poor -, her charm and good looks, together with her good education and humble manners made Leon approach her. The first chapter of Sharkskin which describes the courting makes quite an entertaining read. There was not much romance, the whole affair was conducted in a quite businesslike way by Leon and Alexandra, Edith's mother, who set the rules for the further proceedings.

But the marriage proved to be a rather unhappy affair. Leon didn't change his lifestyle of going out late every evening (except Sabbath) without his wife. Edith, who had worked as a very young teacher and librarian for the Cattaui family, the most influential Jewish family in Egypt, had to give up her job she loved so much and was confined to the home where she was supposed to take care of the children and the household, which was de facto dominated by Leon's mother, a rather stern woman from Aleppo who insisted to speak only Arabic (usually Levantine families like the Lagnados would speak French as native language).

Both parents felt deeply enrooted in Egypt. While more and more of their friends and relatives were leaving the country, they tried to hold out as long as possible. But after a short arrest of the oldest sister Suzette, it is obvious that they have to leave. In Paris, the family which is now completely depended on the support by some organizations that deal with Jewish refugees, has to wait quite a long time until finally being admitted to be resettled in the US.

Life in New York held many difficulties in stock for the Lagnados: Leon, once a quite wealthy and successful businessman, had to support his family with the small earnings he made as a street seller of fake silk ties; the mother's dream "to rebuild the hearth" fell apart since the older children were step by step going their own way or even leaving home for good. Life in Cairo was better in so many respects for the older generation and the nostalghia they are feeling in relation to their home country doesn't exactly help them to embrace the American Way of Life that seems so strange to them.

While the author's father seems to get tired from life and is withdrawing more and more to his prayer books, Edith surprisingly re-invents herself. She applies for a library job and despite lacking degrees or practical experience (except for her work as a young girl in the Cattaui library), she is surprisingly hired. From the author's descriptions it becomes clear that this - beside her childhood - was probably the happiest time in the life of her mother, who deeply loved (mainly French) literature and who had read the complete Marcel Proust already as a young girl in Cairo.

Lagnado's books touch on many interesting issues: the school and university system in the US; the typical problems of immigrant children who "try to fit in"; the change of the role of women in family and society that started in the 1960s with the Women's Lib movement; the role of tradition and religion in the Jewish community; and also the situation of the health sector in the States. Quite a lot of the books deal with the ailments of her parents and herself (Parkinson's and Alzheimer's in the case of Leon; a series of debilitating strokes in the case of Edith; and Hodgkin's disease in the case of the author). But that's not a criticism: this family has had more than their fair share of sufferings.

Lagnado's books are not only a monument for her parents, but also for a now almost extinct specific Levantine Jewish culture. At the end of both books, she is able to reconnect herself with her own past and the past of this community. After many years, she is visiting Cairo again, standing on the balcony of her former family home in Malaka Nazli (now: Ramses) Street. And somewhere in Switzerland she tracks down the remains of the famous Cattaui library, including the books that were purchased decades ago by her mother who was given the key to the legendary Pasha's library by the famous Madame Cattaui.

As readers we can feel rewarded that Lagnado shared her family history with us and we can be glad that she was able to make new friends again in her native city. Two truly remarkable and touching memoirs. ( )

Title: The Arrogant Years
Author: Lucette Lagnado
Format: Kindle
Reading Dates: Oct 28 - Dec 29, 2012
Rating: **1/2

The Arrogant Years is a memoir of Lucette Lagnado, a journalist for the New York Post, who was born a Jew in Cairo, Egypt. I have to admit I thought most Jews left Egypt around the time of Moses, and apparently most Jews did, but there was a remnant who stayed or ended up there and survived until the mid 20th century. Lagnado's family descends from that remnant.

Lagnado begins the book with stories of her mother, Edith, a protected but bright young girl from Cairo who caught the eye of the influential Cattaui family. She enjoyed the privileged position as a teacher and librarian with the family until she met Lagnado's father, a rather sketchy character who insisted that his new wife quit her job. Several years and children later, during the Nasser dictatorship, their lives threatened by more and more restrictions, Lagnado's family left for Paris and eventually Brooklyn.

At this point the focus of the book changes from Edith to Lagnado herself. She spends quite a bit of time relating how she grew up in the middle of the women's liberation movement and how she tried to reconcile that with the strict separation of women and men in her local synagogue. This is followed with a recap of a medical crisis, her college years, her subsequent life as a journalist, and then her struggles as she tries to balance being a good daughter and a working woman with an elderly, disabled mother.

Lagnado ends the book by traveling the globe, reconnecting with the people of her earlier stories, and bringing the reader up to date on their lives. Part of the problem I found with the book was that there were so many of these minor characters, few of whom ever seemed described enough to make me distinguish among them, that the ending left me flat.

In doing some post-reading research I found that Lagnado had written an earlier memoir about her father and the family's exile from Egypt. It was at that point (and only at that point) that I realized that this book was supposed to be a similar tribute to her mom. That did help me understand why certain stories were included that I had puzzled over and why I enjoyed the beginning and the part of the book where Lagnado hooks up with the Cattui family to document their fortunes since Cairo. Truth be told the stories about her mother were for the most part more interesting that than the stories that Lagnado wrote about herself. I think if she had concentrated more on her mother and less on herself, the whole book would have been more engaging.

That being said, I wonder now about the memoir she wrote about her father, The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit: A Jewish Family's Exodus from Old Cairo to the New World. Perhaps the stories in The Arrogant Years were weak because she had already told her story in the first book? Almost enough motivation to make me pick up the first book and find out. Almost. ( )

The Arrogant Years: One Girl's Search for Her Lost Youth, from Cairo to Brooklyn by Lucette Lagnado is a memoir about the author's early childhood in Cairo, the circumstances that brought her family to New York City, and her adolescence/college years in the United States. It is also a loving remembrance of the author's mother and her heritage.

I instantly loved Lucette's mother, Edith, because of her love for education and libraries. As a young woman before her marriage, Edith worked as a teacher for an exclusive Cairo academy, L'Ecole Cattaui, and helped develop their first library:

"Madame Cattaui decreed the school would have a state-of-the-art library and la chere Mademoiselle Matalon would be the one to organize it. That was the extraordinary project entrusted to Edith - to set up a library that would allow even students of modest means, or simply those with great intellectual curiosity, to read and study and take home any books they fancied
"...It was a thrilling assignment, and Edith, still in her teens, rose to the challenge. Driven, committed, and thoroughly impassioned by her undertaking, she had never felt so empowered as when she ordered more books, and money was no object, and she could indulge in all her tastes" (pg. 57).

Sounds like heaven! I'm a librarian, but when I order books, not only is money an object, but I can only order boring health sciences books. Even so, it's thrilling to order new books and handle them when they come in. I can only imagine how much more amazing that would be if I were actually interested in the books!

When Edith married her husband, Leon, he expected her to quit her job. She did so very reluctantly. Years later, after the family moved to Brooklyn and was under financial strain, Edith ignored her husband's wishes and got a job - at a branch of the Brooklyn Public Library:

"One day after dropping me off at Berkeley, she had trudged across the expanse of Prospect Park West and interviewed for a job at the imposing library with the big bronze entranceway. And though she didn't have any of the classic credentials - a college degree or even a high school equivalency diploma - she was able to draw on her vast store of knowledge and her literary sensibility to persuade the library to hire her practically on the spot.
"...With a few tweaks to her wardrobe, thirty years after L'Ecole Cattaui, my mother was ready to return to work at a library.
"It was a part-time job and she was only a clerk. Her pay was a pittance - barely above minimum wage. But no matter, to her mind she was going back to those halcyon days working with the pasha's wife. She would be her own woman again, and more important still, she would be surrounded by books" (pg. 205-206).

As Lucette makes clear, Edith "was passionate about libraries - it gave her such pleasure to step into those quiet rooms filled with books... She trusted libraries implicitly - they were sacred to her, holy sites" (pg. 189).

The title of the book - The Arrogant Years - comes from a quote in F. Scott Fitzgerald's Tender is the Night:

"She put on the first ankle-length day dress she had owned in many years and crossed herself reverently with Chanel Sixteen.... How good.... to be worshipped again, to pretend to have a mystery. She had lost two of the great arrogant years in the life of a pretty girl - now she felt like making up for them."

The premise that Lagnado takes from this quotation is that nearly every woman, at some time in her life, though generally when she's young and knows everything, has her "arrogant years" - a time when she feels most confident about herself, her appearance, her intelligence: "that period in a young woman's life when she feels - and is - on top of the world" (pg. 58).

This book, as evidenced by the title, revolves around the "arrogant years" of two women living in completely different worlds. A mother and a daughter, living and fighting with each other, loving and supporting the other. Lagnado tells her mother's story of young womanhood in Cairo, and juxtaposes her own adolescence in Brooklyn, New York. We get an account of Edith's life - the ups and downs, her arrogant years and her repressed years.

Overall, The Arrogant Years is a touching and thoughtful story of mothers and daughters, adapting to the inevitable changes in life, and the strength of womanhood. It doesn't matter that when we pick up the book we don't know these two women. As we read, we come to know them and respect them for their amazing experiences and the obstacles they overcame. Furthermore, the writing is clear, drawing the reader in without barriers. A memoir worth reading, for sure. ( )

I did not enjoy this book as much as her previous book. It's an okay follow-up book but not as good as i'd hoped from a talented writer. I suggest she write a book about another topic next, perhaps related to her experiences as a journalist. ( )