The Memory Palace by Mira Bartok

Opening the pages of an author's memoir depicting a tumultuous life with a mother with schizophrenia should be like opening Pandora's Box.  The craziness and disfunction should come flying off the pages out of control.  And with all of that craziness and disfunction, elements of shock, disgust, horror, and revelation should be the expected, clear consequences for both the author and the reader.  Saddly, the only consequence that struck me was shock.  My shock was not in response to the author's experiences with schizophrenia, rather, it was shock resulting from the author's choice in telling her story in a mellow, low-key tone.

Dad moves out and leaves the family.  Grandpa mentally, verbally, and physically abuses his wife, daughter, and grandchildren.  Grandma quietly lives in her bubble trying to keep the peace.  And Mira and her sister Rachel just try to make it from one day to the next.  As the sisters enter college, they change their names to avoid unwelcome housecalls from their mother, who conjures delusions of people trying to hurt her and her children because she suffers from paranoid schizophrenia.  It's seemingly the perfect recipe for the next great American novel ~ families overcoming unfortunate circumstances and tragedy.  The recipe contains the major characters and their roles, but it's missing a key ingredient ~ suspense leading to that climatic moment in a tragic tale that makes readers say to themselves, "How the hell did anyone ever survive this?"  I so wanted that moment in this memoir.  I wanted to gasp in horror. But the novel never afforded me that opportunity.  The facts and circumstances of the author's story are told in a matter-of-fact, clinical manner, which made it difficult to sympathize with the broken pieces of her life.  Unfortunately, The Memory Palace did not hold a majestic place in my own memory.

Mennonite in a Little Black Dress by Rhoda Janzen

Well, the proverbial storm clouds have lifted ~ both literally and figuratively.  At least for the time being on my end of the spectrum, it doesn't appear as if the world is ending and the Rapture is coming.  Not today anyway.  I haven't felt any horrible tremors of an earthquake or seen any out-of-control fires sweeping through the nation or witnessed any Biblical-type flooding.  Nope.  It's been quite the opposite, really.  I already had my own personal week of hell and have paid my dues until the next wave hits.  But now things are looking up.  The sun is shining after a full week of rain; my dog seems to be feeling more comfortable; and I have an interview on Thursday for a permanent teaching position.

Huh. .  . Maybe the world is ending. . . lol

Thanks to the few rays of light that are beginning to peer out from the end of the tunnel, I was able to get back into the groove of reading again.  My groove, however, did not include finishing The Invisible Bridge.  I tried reading another 50 or so pages, but it just wasn't holding my interest.  And let's just suppose that this Harold Camping guy happened to be right about the end of the world today.  Did I really want a boring novel that moved slower than my grandmother on a walker to be the last thing I had read before the world swallowed me whole (because I doubt I'd be one of the chosen)?  Not that I was sitting around waiting for judgment but really, life is too short, there are too many good books out there, and I am far too busy to be tied to something that is just not working for me.

Mennonite in a Little Black Dress is also not the last novel I hope to read before my clock runs out, but at least it was mildly entertaining, somewhat humorous, and moved at a pace I could appreciate.  The author's witty and large vocabulary base certainly kept her memoir rolling.  ("Vainglorious" is her favorite word.  It makes an appearance on every page).  But she left me with a huge lingering question, the whole basis of why a novel is written:  What was the purpose in telling her story?  Perhaps it was to prove to the world that she continues to have a large vocabulary base despite the fact that her husband left her for a man named Bob and that she has suffered some major health problems.  After all of this trauma and drama, however, I was really expecting the unveiling of a huge revelation, such as a life-changing lesson learned.  All I really got out of it was her self-deprecating manner in poking fun at the Mennonite religion and culture.

Ah, well.  So be it.  It's not like the world is ending; right?  There's still time to find another novel out there with a purpose.

Funny in Farsi by Firoozeh Dumas

For a book that is less than 200 pages, it certainly took me a while to trudge through this one.  Consciously, I'm telling myself that I enjoyed it because I really wanted to feel connected to the author and her experiences in some way.  Memoirs are one of my favorite genres, and I was really routing for this one.  But deep within the cogs and gears spinning inside my subconscious, I know that I really wasn't that into this book and didn't quite grasp its purpose and intent.

Funny in Farsi is a somewhat funny memoir about Firoozeh Dumas's immigration to Whittier, California from Iran when she was seven years old.  The chapters of the book serve more as a series of short stories rather than a cohesive flow from one event to the next.  Some of the chapters are so disjointed that I felt like I was putting together an impossible tangram puzzle in an attempt to make sense of its pattern and where it would eventually lead me.  I also had difficulty connecting to the author.  Aside from the fact that she has certainly led a much more privileged life than I have, and aside from the fact that we are both women, I could not find a common, solid link between us.

Although the book was generally a bust for me, there were some stories that made me laugh.  Her trip to Disney Land where she gets separated from her family, for example, was pretty hillarious.  Unfortunately, most of the other stories just did not resonate with me.  Like any other book or piece of literature, our own personal experiences play heavily on whether or not we love it, hate it, or just don't care for it.  I have to say that this was one that I just didn't care for.

Perfection by Julie Metz

This has been an unbelievably snowy winter!  We are in the last two days of January, and we've already missed five days of school.  Aside from accumulating four and a half feet of snow and these school days that will need to be made up in the beautiful, sunny, happy days of June (when everyone's mind has been on vacation since May 1st), I've discovered that I've gained a little more than I've bargained for this month.  I haven't stepped on a scale recently, but the waist line in my jeans is clearly screaming, "Cool it, lady.  We're reaching our max."  It's so hard to go outside for my daily walk in all of this snow and ice, and it's so easy to eat those brownies and Hershey Kisses by the handful because they speak to me in a much more tantalizing and soothing voice than those pesky uptight jeans.

It has also been easy to spend money.  What else is there to do when you're snowed in?  Usually, I check books out of the library.  But cabin fever has been driving and chauffering me to the malls and bookstores in search of atmospheric change.  I need to get out and do something other than clean house, shovel snow, and watch TV.  So on top of snow, school days, and a few extra pounds (please, God, only be a few), I have gained a few more books for my home library.  One of the books that I randomly bought in a hazy, vulnerable moment of snow-day impulsivity is Perfection:  A Memoir of Betrayal and Renewal by Julie Metz.

One of the things that attracted me to the book was its title, more specifically, the word "renewal."  I think many of us eventually hit a point or even several points in our lives where we feel the desire to change something about ourselves and how we live.  We want to reinvent ourselves because we believe it will provide us with a renewed sense of happiness and success.  I wanted to find out how this woman could renew herself after discovering her husband's infedelities after he suddenly dies.  At the age of 44, Metz is not only left a widow and a single mother of a six-year old daughter, but she is now left with the knowledge of her husband's secret life full of lies and deceit.  She plods through moments of loneliness and despair but somehow finds a way to summon the fortitude to confront her husband's mistresses and move past his affairs.

Metz provides us with an honest and bold look into her personal life through a natural prose that guides us easily from one experience to the next.  I enjoyed how she provided us with subtle hints into people's personalities aimed to steer our thinking toward the guilt or innocence of a particular party.  These clues also appeared to be personal retrospective discoveries that she made while writing her memoir.  The book did have a few low points for me, though.  For example, the section devoted to Darwin's Theory of Evolution to explain why men cheat was a bit technical and dull to read.  I also found my mind wandering as she ran through a detailed laundry list of every one (I'm assuming every one but who can be sure) of her sexual encounters since college.  Granted, I understand the author's purpose for including these tales (the need to belong, feel loved, important, special, etc., etc.) but didn't feel like we needed to be dragged through so many of them.  Fortunately, these bumps and baubles did not diminish my admiration for her ability to forgive.  Though she does not forgive everyone involved, she finds a way to make a series of choices that allow her to trudge through, make changes, and find peace for herself and daughter.

Other memoirs I've enjoyed:
     *  Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt
     *  A Piece of Cake by Cupcake Brown
     *  The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls
     *  Running with Scissors by Augusten Burroughs