Ashley Dartnell`s mother was a glamorous American, her father a dashing Englishman, each trying to slough off their past and upgrade to a more romantic and exotic present in Iran. As the story starts, Ashley is eight years old and living in Tehran in the 1960s: the Shah was in power, life for Westerners was rich and privileged. But somehow it didn`t all add up to a fairytale. There were bankruptcies and prisons, betrayals and lovers, lies and evasions. And throughout it all, Ashley`s passionate and strong-willed mother, Genie. Stories of mothers and daughters are some of the most compelling in contemporary memoir, from The Liar`s Club and The Glass Castle to Don`t Let`s Go to the Dogs Tonight and Bad Blood. Farangi Girl deserves to be in their company. It`s an honest and endlessly recognisable portrait of a mother by a daughter who loved her (and was loved in return). Against this extraordinary background, Ashley`s journey into adulthood was more helter-skelter than most and this portrait of a bewitching and endlessly inventive mother is surprising and deeply moving.