book review: Thirty Girls by Susan Minot
The basics: Thirty Girls is the story of two women: Esther, a Ugandan teenager who is one of thirty girls abducted by the Lord's Resistance Army from a convent home, and Jane, a young, idealistic American journalist who travels to Africa to tell the stories of these Ugandan children. My thoughts: From this novel's very first pages, I was struck by the elegant brilliance of Minot's writing. I expected a serious treatment of a devastating part of our global history, and I got it. I also got stunning insight into the life of an idealistic young American woman. Admittedly, as a former idealistic, young American woman, I am partial to such character explorations: "Jane was sufficiently bewildered by what kind of person she was, so it was always arresting when someone, particularly a stranger, summed her up." The juxtaposition of Jane's story with Esther's is haunting. It would be easy to make Jane and her problems seem vapid, but Minot handles the interi...