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Writer: Marjane Satrapi

Satrapi follows her acclaimed youth memoirs Persepolis (2003) and Persepolis 2 [BKL Ag 04] with some tales her grandmother, mother, aunts, and their bosom friends told her about sex and men–stories that are frank, funny, occasionally sad, and utterly credible. Thrice-married Grandma recalls the friend who took counsel on how to convince her husband she was still a virgin–with hilarious, wince-inducing results. Another woman confides that, despite her children (all daughters), “I’ve never seen or touched anything”–male, that is. Arranged marriages, a potion to bind a lover, cosmetic surgery, “embroidery”–by which is meant another means of “restoring” virginity–and more are revealed, assessed, and resolved, all within the context of a women-only tea-bibbing circle in which young Marji is cook (not brewer, she explains), decanter, and enthralled listener. In line with the book’s aura of abandoned constraints, Satrapi dispenses with panel frames; she also elides most background detail; and those choices make the book less graphic-novelish than cartoonish a la, say, Jules Feiffer. The sparkling verbal content, however, triumphs.