This book was really frustrating. I went into thinking it was going to be journalistic portraits of several different Iranian people. But when it was all over and I read the afterward, I felt like this book was closer to fiction. Every story was so depressing and they mostly ended in the worst possible way. It was hard to get through it. But then I realized that each story was a composite of a bunch of different people that she had met and interviewed. She mashed all their lives together to create the most sensationally messed up life that she could. It just read as a really fatalistic, tabloid version of reality. She couldn't have just picked real people and told their real stories? Ugh, I'm mad at this book.