PositiveThe Christian Science MonitorHemon manages to write about his own younger days in a way that makes them both uniquely his own, but also universal ... The essays, written for a series of different publications, can sometimes shift tonally. Early essays about Hemon\'s gang of childhood friends are so lighthearted as to be almost a little frivolous. Hemon’s amusement at his own childhood might be a little greater than the reader’s. Fans of Hemon familiar with past work like the heartbreaking The Lazarus Project might be a little surprised to see how much of a teddy bear the author appears to be in real life. This isn’t to say he skirts serious topics. An essay about his love of and lack of skill in chess touches on fatherhood, both in his relationship with his own father and through the story of one of his chess companions, whose son was shot in the street during the Islamic Revolution in Tehran. Yet overall the tone of the book is not one of pessimism or despair. Despite a life that has seen his family displaced and his childhood home ravaged nearly beyond repair, Hemon seems to remain mostly good-humored ... the relationship between Hemon and his adopted home is a romance.
