The Arrogant Years: One Girl’s Search for Her Lost Youth, from Cairo to Brooklyn

Our member Eva Sprintz writes:

In this memoir, Lucette Lagnado’s sequel to “The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit”, she finally reveals the unexpected and the heartbreaking issues of her own life. Without giving the ending away, after reading the story, you will understand why it took her so long to tell her story.

The story sketches the story of Lucette’s family in 1960s assimilating in America, where a Leon (Dad) fades mutely into the background, and Edith tries to finagle some tiny measure of success / happiness for herself and her family. Loulou (Lucette) finds more footing as she begins to grow up – yet she sees her arrogant years miserably cut short as an unexpected diagnosis derails her hard-earned efforts to build an identity as a respected person and a woman. This experience neither she (nor her mother) ever fully recovers. Indeed, this story is a fascinating story of assimilation and a heartbreaking book you may not be able to put down.