`````"When a thing degenerates slowly, people tend not to notice. Each little decline is only compared to the previous decline and not to the relative whole." Thus wrote Kaylie Jones of her father's health in her memoir, "A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries." However, I would argue that she was making a statement of society as a whole during that time (the l970's).
`````I have blogged earlier about this film. Usually, I have had the experience of enjoying the book first, and then watching the movie second. I had ordered the book on a whim from Amazon, as I am a fan of biographies. Kaylie is the daughter of James Jones, who wrote "From Here to Eternity." Even if you've not read it, most people have seen the film and can recall the famed scene on the beach. Every music video of lovers rolling in the sand has borrowed from it.
`````Ms. Jones writes of her childhood in Paris, growing up along the Seine. Her parents "adopted" a French boy, and she lovingly recounts the normal traumas that went along with siblings getting to know each other. Hers was an obviously unconventional childhood, with a father driven to write.
`````Although she is an American by birth, she was unfamiliar with her homeland. When she returns to it in the l970's, she and her brother are not welcomed in her new highschool. Compounded with the new dating rituals that she must tread, is the illness her father now faces. Ms Jones writes of how her father eases her into accepting womanhood and into dealing with his passing.
`````When I reviewed the film I stated that it resonated with me, as I too felt like an alien in my childhood, as I had moved here from Europe as a child. I had been younger, but I had faced heavy teasing for my accent and for being different. I enjoyed the book as well. It's touching, in that she obviously loved her father dearly, and misses him still.
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