Slummy Mummy by Fiona Neill

First, let me say that I have learned after reading Fiona Neill's book Slummy Mummy that the term "slummy" in British English is more akin to our word sloppy as opposed to the more common usage of the phrase.

Second, let me point out that I did not expect to like this book. I didn't think I would hate it, but I also didn't pick it up expecting to read a great story or encounter great literature. I saw Slummy Mummy as a mindless diversion book.

Having those two caveats out of the way, I will admit I enjoyed Slummy Mummy more than I intended. Imagine, as a mother, your worst possible morning taking the kids to school, turn that day into a routine which occurs every day, and then add a good touch of humor. Now you have the basis for Neill's novel. Lucy Sweeney, the "mum" in the title is drowning in a sea of overwhelming motherhood. She cannot keep up with her kids' needs on a daily basis and her OCD husband does not seem to help the situation.

Sweeney finds herself competing with other school parents like the "Yummy Mummys," the "Alpha Mum," and "Sexy Domesticated Dad." The thing is, as a parent of school-age kids I would hate to admit I'm a slummy mummy, but I do know my fair share of yummy mummies and alpha mums. Neill's descriptions are really funny because they're so real.

On top of the humor, Neill tells a pretty good story. Sweeney finds herself unhappy with her personal life and turns to a flirtation with Sexy Domesticated Dad to push her out of her misery. The humorous antics and horrific moments in the story end up telling a good plot. Everyone is relatively redeemed in the end. but it actually made me stop and think about my own family situation. I hadn't anticipated that when I looked at the front cover.

It is diverting and not terribly heavy. The cover might forgo a read in public. But Slummy Mummy is worth the read.

Mennonite in a Little Black Dress by Rhoda Janzen

I need to take a break from reading memoirs. I have two friends currently writing their memoirs and they're SO much better than the published books I'm reading. Somehow current memoirs do not seem to follow a standard narrative line. It is acceptable to revisit the same topic multiple times throughout a book even though the reader has already learned about the topic, more than once. I prefer reading books that follow a story rather than ones which jump around reciting anecdotal stories without connecting them.

A friend gave me Janzen's book and described it as a light, fun read. The title caught my attention. It's the beginning of summer, a comedic beach read sounded like the perfect idea. The story is light and fun and engaging. I did laugh from time to time. But I was hoping for more. The title is a bit of a tease, suggesting a greater dichotomy between the character and her upbringing than actually appears in the story.

The basic plot of Mennonite in a Little Black Dress is a newly divorced woman who travels to her childhood home for a chance to recover and put her life back together. To add insult to injury her husband left her for a man named Bob who he met on “Gay.com.” Janzen also suffered from a car accident which left her physically hurt. Through the course of the memoir the reader learns thatJanzen’s ex-husband was verbally abusive and a manic depressive who brought his wife into his misery. Janzen counters her experiences with her admittedly bisexual husband to the much more traditional men of her Mennonite upbringing.

Both Janzens’ brothers and her father are devoted Mennonites who accept her differences of opinion relative to religion and lifestyle but yet remain wedded to their traditional views. By the end of the book Janzen has reconciled herself to many of the Mennonite ideas she escaped in college and through her marriage. But she leaves the conclusion necessarily open-ended as to where she will turn in the future.

The whole book rang a bit false, “Ha ha, my husband treated me like crap and then left me. Now I’m going to poke fun at him, at me, and at my upbringing. Isn’t that funny?” I enjoy snark and satire and witty cynicism. But it was a bit too raw and painful to be genuinely funny.

House of Testosterone: One Mom's Survival in a Household of Males by Sharon O'Donnell

My mom picked this book out for me based on its title and its cover art; she figured as a girl who has way too many Barbie dolls and two boys I could appreciate what O'Donnell had to say. Whenever my sons saw this book on my nightstand they would laugh and tell me all about the boy who was dressed like Captain Underpants. The cover sold exactly what the book is: a light comedic memoir of one woman's attempt to live in a house of males; it seems like the perfect book for a mom of two boys. Having read it, I immediately passed it on to a friend who is the mom of three boys. There is enough truth and humor it what O'Donnell says that I can it will make the rounds amongst my mom friends.

An excerpt from the books describes the life of a mom of all boys:

• you automatically wipe off the toilet seat before you sit down
• your weekend schedule includes more total hours of little league sports than it does sleep
• the lamp in your family room is held together by Super Glue in three places
• you can carry on a conversation about athletic cup sizes with the college-aged guy at the sporting goods store with no embarrassment whatsoever

All moments to which I can either relate or imagine will exist in my future. Undeniably these bullet points make me smile. However...

O'Donnell needed a better editor.

The book has two fatal flaws which kept it sitting on my nightstand for three months rather than getting read in a night. First, O'Donnell makes gross over-generalizations about men which makes her sound like she is writing in the 1950s. Second, she mentions the same anecdotes two or three times in different sections of the book setting up her train of thought as disjointed and repetitive. Both of these issues, I think, could have been fixed had someone sat her down and made her rewrite more carefully before publishing what should be a fun look at parenting boys.

O'Donnell's book is a series of anecdotes about living with four sports-crazed, non-cooking, laundry-challenged men - her three sons and her husband. As a mom of boys, some of the stories made me smile - although nothing in particular is coming to mind which tells me they weren't all that memorable. I could relate to spending hours pouring of sports details and driving from scouts, to sports, to other sports. But O'Donnell's husband is a 1950s Neanderthal who somehow completely missed the woman's movement on the 1960s. O'Donnell cheerfully talks about he forgets anniversaries, complains about going to the theatre with his wife, and ignores her whenever a sporting event is on. I hope most women would not put up with his stereotypical antics and would not raise their sons to emulate this outdated model. I am sure the author exaggerated moments for the laughs but instead the stories end up making her look manipulated and lacking in a backbone.

By the end of the book I felt like I had read about her RV camping experiences and trips to Disney at least half a dozen times. I knew from her multiple mentions exactly which baseball team her family preferred. While the stories worked as individual essays, as a book she needed to remove redundancy and better organize her stories.

Finally, the last chapter of the book suddenly veers from humorous to sappy. "Moms hug your boys and tell them how much you love them before they grow up and leave you. Because leave you they will," seemed to be the tone of the last section. I would have preferred she stay light and humorous and end her book on a funny note rather than the shift to nostalgic.

House of Testosterone is a classic example of good marketing and a good cover to make up for a relatively weak book.

The Lecturer's Tale by James Hynes

Last year I read Moo and thoroughly enjoyed it. The descriptions and the ridiculousness of academia were well displayed in Jane Smiley's book. When I finished, a friend recommended The Lecturer's Tale. I finally found a copy and happily devoured it over the holiday break.

Anyone with a graduate degree in the social sciences/humanities should read this book. Especially if you found some of the graduate school theory ludicrous, ridiculous, or otherwise downright weird. James Hyne's novel is satirical, slightly eccentric, and in certain sections ... yep, downright weird. But I laughed loud and hard and identified with a lot of what he wrote.

The basic plot: Nelson Humboldt is fired from his contract composition teaching gig at a (fictional) Ivy League University. Leaving the English building his hand gets run over by a bike and he loses a finger. He discovers that with his reattached finger he can force his will on others. In short order, Humboldt uses his power to get his job back, secure his apartment, and help his friends. However, he gets power hungry. If it sounds weird, it is. But the point of the power is to show how manipulative and power-driven academia can be. Hynes portrays that extremely well.

Hynes has an incredibly witty and deadly accurate portrayal of life in academia. He uses jargon and sexual innuendo and the ridiculous to paint a terribly pointed picture. While reading one night I was convulsing in laughter. I tried to explain what was so funny to my husband. I eventually said, "It's really not funny at all. It's just too true." Although exaggerated the scene in question (in which a flustered lecturer tries to deliver a paper on gender/queer theory to the tenured professors in the English department) could have happened in my program.

There is a point near the end of the book when Hynes jumps off the deep end. The plot gets really weird and slightly nonsensical. I was not overly found of the out-of-body type experience of the characters. Nonetheless, in order to complete his study of university life he needed a farcical denouement. He returned to the satirical depiction of university life and ended the book on a good note.

I will definitely read more work by Hynes. I would recommend this book to anyone who was heartily invested in academia - and is willing to laugh at it and themselves. However, I cannot imagine The Lecturer's Tale has a wide appeal. He purposely overuses all of the theoretical jargon that academia loves which won't make sense to some readers.

If you liked The Lecturer's Tale try:

• Moo (that's what introduced me to this)
• To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis (a personal favorite: sci fi, but academic)
• Faculty Towers: The Academic Novel and Its Discontents (the bibliography in this book lists other academic novels. I haven't read this yet but a friend recommended it based on my reading of Hynes)