S'Mother: Adam Chester

As a person with a slightly crazed mother, I was drawn to Adam Chester's book, S'Mother, which is basically just a collection of his mother's crazed letters. What's that? Humor? Crazy Mother? Count me in! Adam Chester is, like myself, the only child of a single parent. We are a special group of people who know the realities of overprotective mothers and the complete inability to shrug off some of mom's nuttiness onto someone else. We are often victims of complete and utter public humiliation. We are frequently leaned upon, forcing us into responsibilities beyond our age. We are undoubtedly loved in the very best ways that our cuckoo mothers are able. Chester just happens to have kept all of the panicked little notes and letters that his mother sent him, so that we now have them here in a lovely collection of neuroses.

S'Mother begins with an introduction to Adam's Mother in a seemingly harmless tale about the day she brought his sweater to him at school. Except Adam's Mother isn't like any normal mother. Adam's Mother marches herself into the boys locker room while Adam is in gym class and embarrasses him in front of the entire Junior High by handing over his sweater and loudly stating "You forgot to bring your sweater. It's going to rain today!" I mean really, Junior High? Into the locker room? The woman has no boundaries. And so begins the saga of an overprotective mother constantly intruding on her son's life--mostly with regards to her Will, should she suddenly pass away.

Here's my hesitation. The letters are sort of funny, in an oddball kind of way. Chester's narration is kind of funny. There are a few formatting things that distracted me (for example, not everything in parentheses needs to be italicized), but that was minor. So why didn't I laugh? I kind of expected to find some truly humiliating stories that would make me laugh out loud. Or at least chuckle a little. I was certainly captivated by the narrative, and I enjoyed the stories about Chester's life experiences (a bear hug from Barry White! Christmas cards from Elton John!), but the letters from his mother were just...letters from his mother. Sure she's a little wacky. Of course there's no need for an adult man to be reminded to wear a coat in the snow. But she's a little old lady with practically nothing else do, given she has no husband or children. Her uber-involvement in his life is to be expected. Then again, considering my own mother-daughter situation, I may be biased???

I'd like to know what "normal" people think of this book. Is it funny if it isn't quite so familiar?

Rating: $$

ARC provided courtesy of Abrams

The Sharper Your Knife The Less You Cry: Kathleen Flinn

Maybe it was the thumbnail picture of  the Tower d'Eiffel  on the cover. Maybe it was the enthusiastic quote by Elizabeth Gilbert (author of Eat Pray Love). Maybe it was the mysteriously dangerous title. Whatever the reason, I picked up The Sharper Your Knife, The Less You Cry by Kathleen Flinn at the library book sale. The back cover said something about a woman on an adventure to pursue her passion at Le Cordon Bleu. I am only vaguely interested in cooking, but I am over-the-moon-in-love with all things French, so I hoped this read would immerse me in all things Parisian.

The story is somewhat familiar. Kathleen Flinn is unhappy with climbing the corporate ladder. She's a journalist who has been swept away into a career she doesn't even like. Fortune smiles on her and she is fired from her job. It turns out to be the best possible thing because it allows Flinn to finally pursue a lifelong dream--to earn a diploma from THE Le Cordon Bleu, in the beautiful City of Lights, Paris, France. She writes about her experiences, which vary from the mundane to the comically absurd. She meets an array of people from all walks of life, and is challenged in every way possible.

As a memoir, The Sharper Your Knife, The Less You Cry isn't eventful. There are no real life lessons to be learned from this book, except maybe that we should always follow our bliss (which I'm hoping we've all learned by now, after the avalanche of uplifting memoirs about how great life can be when you do what you love). There is drama, there is comedy, there is love, there are shed tears and peals of laughter. There are eccentric chefs, and bizarre house guests, and friendly shop owners. There are also pages and pages of mouth-watering French recipes.

In short, unless you are passionate about France, food, or French food, this book doesn't have much to offer the average reader. However, if you get excited by a good cheese and wine pairing, or if you lose yourself in daydreams about walking the Seine by moonlight, this is a book to get lost in.

Rating: $$

Hit By A Farm: Catherine Friend

Almost as an afterthought, at the very end of a book sale spree, I picked up Hit By A Farm by Catherine Friend. The back cover mentioned something about a modern woman and her partner deciding to become farmers, and the numerous boundaries she faced down while handling ram testicles and assisting in lambing. As a backyard farmer myself, I found immediate humor in Friend’s casual assumptions that farming would be fun and easy. I remember having those same thoughts!

Catherine is a self professed “guppy”—gay urban yuppie. She writes children’s books and teaches some writing classes. When she met and fell in love with Melissa, she had no idea that it would result in a Minnesota farm. It turns out that Melissa’s lifelong dream has been to be a farmer. When faced with this new fact, Catherine thinks it sounds like a good time! Living off the land and all that jazz. So they buy 50 acres of land in Minnesota and become farmers. Except it’s not quite that easy. There is a lot to learn about farming and shepherding. There are a lot of personal boundaries that have to be crossed. There are a whole lot of expectations that have to be considered and subsequently shattered. What starts out as a sweet, countrified dream soon becomes a rural nightmare.

There are so many wonderful, memorable tidbits in this book and I wish I could remember more of them to share with you. I particularly enjoyed any of the scenes involving the llama they purchase to protect the sheep. Because after all, who wouldn’t think to buy a llama to watch over a herd of sheep?! There are also some hilarious scenes involving the chickens—or more specifically, the roosters who compete for the role of top cock.

The beauty of Friend’s memoir is that it is realistic. Amidst the humor there is tragedy, and with every unexpected turn, her relationship with Melissa suffers a little more, causing her to question their future together. Their relationship is tested, as are Catherine's boundaries. Eventually, Catherine must decide what is important to her and what she needs to do for herself to make herself successful in life and love. I laughed out loud, I sighed with complete sympathy regarding farming boundaries (because you see, there are no boundaries on a farm), and my heart beamed for the obvious love Catherine and Melissa share. I think this book is totally enjoyable for everyone, even if you’re not a lesbian farmer in Minnesota.

Rating: $$$

Don't Follow Me, I'm Lost: Richard Rushfield

Don’t Follow Me, I’m Lost is a pitch-perfect story of what happens when a new era swallows an old mentality. Richard Rushfield had the opportunity of experiencing Hampshire College at a time when the 80’s nihilism movement was overcoming the drug-induced era of hippie love.

Rushfield’s memoir is a delightfully structured, well written narrative. Beginning with his pre-enrollment days as a kid without social label, Rushfield discusses the realities of a “hippie school”. In its heyday, Hampshire was a college built on the foundation that learning shouldn’t be structured. The student body was a notoriously drug-addicted clan of mixed social circles, while the staff consisted of free-loving, free-thinking hippies who encouraged students to “try it out” whenever faced with something new.

Through a series of well-timed events, Rushfield falls in with a campus clique known as The Supreme Dicks, who are the most hated people at Hampshire. A group of lackadaisical layabouts, The Supreme Dicks lived by a certain standard of nonchalance. It is in his descriptions of the Supreme Dicks housing that Rushfield’s writing really shines. As I read about the food-encrusted paper plates stuffed between couch cushions, stagnant smoke-filled air, and industrious cockroach population, I could feel a layer of grimy apathy climb over me. Such were his descriptions of dorm life at Hampshire, that I could feel the weight of bitter nihilism.

Having discovered that college was a place where teachers didn’t take a roll call, Rushfield reveled in his freedom by not going to class at all, opting instead to loll about in the dingy quarters of his dorm. With a track record like his, it seems a miracle that Richard Rushfield ever graduated. His memoir is filled with the rollicking adventures of a young man on a college campus where one could do no wrong. The era of hippie love and free thinking had created an atmosphere where all expression was artful and censorship was to be banned. However, in the 1980’s, the hippie movement at Hampshire college faced its first set of campus rules. Class completion became mandatory, and disciplinary action could be taken against students for almost anything. The response was nihilistic, with a student body turned aggressive and determined to hold onto its apathy.

Don’t Follow Me, I’m Lost is a meandering narrative, with no moral theme of divine intervention to tie it up neatly. It is a very real—one might even say gritty—story of how complicated it can be to come to terms with responsibility in an atmosphere where apathy rules. Rushfield is a talented writer who brings every scene and emotion to life without trite clichés.

The Adderall Diaries: Stephen Elliott

Memoirs are, by nature, self indulgent writing. As readers we overlook this fact, hoping that the memoirist has something interesting or humorous to say. The Adderall Diaries by Stephen Elliott is a mixed bag. At times it is a confusing rant about the life of a drug addled writer, but then it turns into the focused story of a fascinating murder. It’s a story about Elliott’s traumatic childhood, his adult penchant for sadomasochism, and his thin connection to a man on the outskirts of a high profile murder trial.

Stephen Elliott is not new to the writing world. He has written one other memoir as well as four novels and one volume of erotica. For him to begin this text by mentioning that he is battling his writer’s block by abusing the ADD medication Adderall, does not bode well for the book.

My struggle with this story is that it reads the way a man abusing Adderall would speak; it’s unfocused and wandering. I was never sure where he was taking the story, or what it was really about. The lone anchor in the story is a murder committed in 2007. A high profile computer programmer married a Russian mail-order bride, had two children with her, and after almost ten years together, murdered her for suspected infidelity. It’s an interesting event, and I’m sorry Elliott didn’t spend more time developing that story. Instead he writes about his teenage years spent living on the streets and in group homes. He writes about the strange array of dysfunctional relationships he enters. And of course, he talks about drugs. None of these things connect to the murder he is trying to write about.

Here’s the rub; Elliott is a fantastic writer. He commands a mastery of the English language. He writes with brutal honesty and ugly imagery. It is reminiscent of the Beats who wrote the garish truth (Ginsberg comes to mind). And though he is writing this self indulgent memoir, he does so by shining a light on the darker side of alternative lifestyles. He writes about sadomasochistic relationships and Adderall in his coffee as commonplace. Elliott writes about a world that most of America doesn’t even know exists, and he does so without shame. For that alone, Elliott deserves some kudos.

Candy Girl: Diablo Cody

Before her Juno fame, Diablo Cody was a fairly average working class girl, living in Minneapolis, in a job she didn't much care for, writing on her own time, and generally strolling through life without much aim. And then she became a stripper.

Candy Girl is Cody's memoir of the year she spent in various nudie bars, taking off her clothes and dancing for money. The novella is subtitled "A Year in the Life of an Unlikely Stripper". An innocuous girl in hippie clothing shows up at a seedy dive for amateur night and receives looks of doubt. She stumbles around on stage, unaware of her limbs and is ungraceful as well as uncoordinated. What would most likely end in a single night of unspoken humiliation for most, turns out to be the launch pad for Cody's new career. She fiercely admits that her strange interest in the sex industry is perverse and at one point she even goes into the depths of stripping out of pure curiosity and witnesses how dark and disgusting back room business can be. It's a fascinating journey into a dark secret of society that most of us turn blind eyes to.

Possibly the most fascinating element of this story is Cody's boyfriend. Jonny neither encourages nor discourages her new chosen career. He is steady as a rock, and becomes increasingly curious. He takes pride in his sexy girlfriend, and is there at the end of every night to snuggle her close and listen to her talk about her night at work. He is possibly the most supportive man in written history. Jonny and Diablo are now married and she claims they are the happiest people in all the U.S.A.

Diablo Cody is a fantastic writer. She is the Francesca Lia Block for grown-ups with a crude vocabulary. She is able to write both common and literately. A smart reader will instantly recognize that Cody is well read and well educated. Candy Girl is filled with all of the true-life minutiae of stripping including gross overshares of industry methods. Cody adamantly maintains that stripping was her fantasy choice. Never once does she allow the reader to feel sorry for her, because stripping was something she volunteered for. It's almost empowering, really.

I have a new hero in Diablo Cody. She is smart, witty, and extremely talented. The girl knows how to turn a phrase, that's for sure!

Such A Pretty Fat or Why Pie Is Not The Answer: Jen Lancaster

LAUGHTER! That is the best word to sum up my reaction to this book. I don't remember the last time I laughed so hard at a novel. Such A Pretty Fat was not on any of my reading lists, I just happened to pick it up last time I was at Borders. I liked the back cover synopsis, and wanted a lighthearted book. I thought I might get a chuckle out of it, but I never expected that I would find myself laughing out loud on the bus ride home.

Jen Lancaster is a memoirist. She has written a few other books that I will probably be interested in reading now. This particular title is about her battle with weightloss. Having reached a size 24, she decides to take on the project of writing a memoir about dieting. Having never previously successfully lost weight, this battle is full of the ups and downs that every dieter has experienced. The complete lethargy that keeps one from exercising. The love-hate relationship one has with food while dieting. And the complete and utter disappointment at finding that every dieter in the world has some excuse to blame their weight on others. Jen Lancaster is witty and rough around the edges. Her writing is conversational and oh so very real. It feels like chatting with Jen over coffee. Or maybe coffee and pie.

I think the most likable aspect of this novel is that it's sort of universal. I don't think you have to be overweight to enjoy Lancaster's insights and her humor. I admit that there are times when I question the sensitivity of Jen Lancaster's writing, but overall, I find her completely marvelous.