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Books: Between the covers

Why write about books? Well, for some of us, books are like lovers. We take them to bed. We cuddle up with them. We press them on our friends. We devour them, savor them — and sometimes throw one against the wall. As my friend Jennifer says, “A book should be lucky to have my attention.”

The Man in the White Sharkskin SuitOk, so we share a high standard. I think a book should grab you by the throat and not let go until you’ve finished reading. That’s a rare book. But it’s worth looking for…

I started this post thinking I’d write about bad books, about books that should carry a warning sticker. (I have stacks of ‘em.) Blame it on sunshine and spring: I’d rather write about books worth reading, and why, books that take over my life for a few days, or a week.

“The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit” did that to me this past weekend. By Lucette Lagnado, a Wall Street Journal reporter, it tells the story of her family’s rich cultural and domestic life in Cairo during and after World War II, when Egypt changed from a kingdom to a dictatorship. As stateless Jews, they embark on a humbling journey to Paris, and from there to a series of New York apartments where the family’s only furniture, for years, is steel cots. (Harper Perennial, $14.95).

Recommended by my friend Suzanne, a discerning reader, whose mother lent it to her.

Why is this book so compelling? Impending doom, for one: their sunny life in cosmopolitan Cairo is going to change.

The man in the white sharkskin suit is Lagnado’s father, Leon. A handsome boulevardier in Cairo, he’s late to marriage and fatherhood, and not very good at either at the start. He is worldly, generous and loving. He’s also parochial, selfish and bullying. He’s human.

Hobbled by a botched hip surgery, Leon becomes mostly housebound in Cairo, and it is there that he and Loulou, as Lagnado is called, cement their bond. He teaches her Arabic when she can’t pick it up at school, and Hebrew at a time when women are segregated at temple and don’t read the texts.

The only chapters I found wanting lacked Leon.

Women suffer in Cairo. Families discard their daughters; husbands abandon them. Married women don’t work outside the home. One sweet note to their wretched exile: in New York, Lagnado’s older sister can be an unmarried, independent woman.

Lagnado tells the larger story of the Jewish exodus from Egypt under Nasser’s dictatorship, but it’s the small moments she uses — a birthday cake tantrum, and how Leon handles it — that brings the book, and her family, to life. It’s a wonderful read.

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