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Mennonite in a Little Black Dress
- A Memoir of Going Home
- Lu par : Hillary Huber
- Durée : 8 h et 15 min
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Mennonite in a Little Black Dress
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Avis de l'équipe
This tartly told memoir with its tenderhearted core and luscious detailings of tangy borschts and double-decker Zwiebach buns slathered with homemade rhubarb jam is an honest, philosophical chronicle of poet and English professor Rhoda Janzen's return home at 43, to her Mennonite family, after being chewed up by a soap operatic sequence of very real personal calamities.
Mennonite in a Little Black Dress begins when Janzen's botched hysterectomy leaves her Velcro-strapping a urine collection bag to her thigh for six months. Just as she's snapped back from incontinence, Nick (her hunky, frequently drunk, charming, bipolar, and verbally abusive husband of 15 years) leaves her for Bob, a man he's met on Gay.com. That same week, a tipsy teen driver crashes Janzen's car on a snowy road. She ends up with two broken ribs and a fractured clavicle. "Under circumstances like these, what was�a gal to do?" she asks. "I'll tell you what I did. I went home to the Mennonites."
What transcends Mennonite in a Little Black Dress from a series of zany essays on "Menno" culture (a capella singalongs, raisins, and sweater vests) is Janzen's deeply nurtured respect for her community. She observes that, like the rest of us, Mennonites struggle with bratty children, substance abuse, dieting, and cheesy first dates an admission that opens up her quest to re-learn happiness into a universally felt exploration.
Janzen's spiritual leader turns out to be her sunny, irreverent mother, Mary, whose bouncy perceptions of sorrow, death, marriage between first cousins, and bodily functions she casually breaks wind at Kohl's while inspecting bundt pans end up revealing how intimately she grasps the true order of things. Hillary Huber is the narrator of Mennonite in a Little Black Dress and her droll, throaty voiceover perfectly pitches to Janzen's acerbic wit and academic background. A master quick-change artist, Huber so nimbly spins into bubbly, chattery Mary Janzen that when she conspiratorially shares, "A relaxed pothead sounds nice", about Rhoda's latest fling, it registers as mildly as "Please pass the Cotletten, dear." Nita Rao
Description
The same week her husband of 15 years ditches her for a guy he met on Gay.com, a partially inebriated teenage driver smacks her VW Beetle head-on. Marriage over, body bruised, life upside-down, Rhoda does what any sensible 43-year-old would do: She goes home.
But hers is not just any home. It's a Mennonite home, the scene of her painfully uncool childhood and the bosom of her family: handsome but grouchy Dad, plain but cheerful Mom. Drinking, smoking, and slumber parties are nixed; potlucks, prune soup, and public prayer are embraced. Having long ago left the faith behind, Rhoda is surprised when the conservative community welcomes her back with open arms and offbeat advice. She discovers that this safe, sheltered world is the perfect place to come to terms with her failed marriage and the choices that both freed and entrapped her.
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Moyenne des évaluations utilisateurs. Seuls les utilisateurs ayant écouté le titre peuvent laisser une évaluation.Commentaires - Veuillez sélectionner les onglets ci-dessous pour changer la provenance des commentaires.
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Global3 out of 5 stars
- Dotty
- 05/01/2010
It's OK
As a Mennonite in the Fresno area, I hardly recognized my community in this book. I'm 25 years older than the author (whose family I know) and didn't suffer the deprivations she describes. There's a whole lot of literary license going on here. So I say, go ahead, listen to the book and enjoy it, but keep that grain of salt firmly in place.
A bigger disappointment for me was the mispronunciation of so very many words by the reader. I was under the impression that readers or producers checked with the author re pronunciations. Guess I was wrong.
12 personnes ont trouvé cela utile
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Global2 out of 5 stars
- Michele Kellett
- 20/06/2011
Wanted to Love It
I also grew up in and out of an isolating religion, and thought I would relate to Ms. Janzen's book. However, her memoir does not succeed, at least for me.
The first problem is structural. This book had its genesis in e-mail messages to friends and colleagues during her sabbatical, and its structure betrays this: it's discursive, disconnected and uneven. Lots of space is taken up when she's bored (the pointless board game story), and not enough space given when she's busy/involved (the encounter with Mitch is dropped with virtually no development, even though I've read that they in fact became a couple).The narrative pools and repeats, but does not get anywhere: she has no more real insight at the end than she does at the beginning and the closing uplift feels tacked-on.
The second problem is one of tone. She insists that she is genuinely fond of and interested in the people and practices she describes, but she sure scores a lot of cheap shots off them before professing her affection. While it's clear that her upbringing launched an intelligent, hard-working woman into the world, it is also obvious that it left her so naive and unworldly that she was dangerously vulnerable to exactly the kind of disastrous marriage she made. She never expresses anger or regret toward her religion or community for this. Instead, she engages in relentless mockery of the "they don't even know what Prada is!" variety. When there is more serious criticism to be made, the fashion-label snark is a bit jarring. It makes Janzen appear more superficial and slight than she can possibly be. I understand she does not want to engage in self-pity, but she's turned it inside out with a coat of brittle barbs. What's hilarious over wine with girlfriends doesn't come off well on the page.
7 personnes ont trouvé cela utile
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Global1 out of 5 stars
- Casey
- 07/11/2009
Neither Memmonite nor black dress...
I have a friend who is a former Mennonite, so I downloaded this book and we read it together. We both agreed to stop listening to it around 3 hours, 30 minutes. I was hoping for insights and my friend was hoping for humorous, relatable stories about being Mennonite. Instead, we got stupid stories that mean nothing. For instance, Janzen goes on and on about playing a board game with her niece. In another part, she goes on and on about having a urine bag taped to her leg. It left you constantly wondering that any of this has to do with being a former Mennonite and when the darn black dress is going to make an appearance.
Save your credits and skip this book.
7 personnes ont trouvé cela utile
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Global4 out of 5 stars
- Katherine
- 01/02/2010
Tender and Touching
This is a sweet tender book. Janzen Reflects back on her Mennonite upbringing with great humor and intelligence. She is kind to her parents and siblings. If you are looking for dirt, go elsewhere. This is a book of love and hope.
5 personnes ont trouvé cela utile
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Global1 out of 5 stars
- Lisa
- 04/12/2009
Don't Bother
As a non-Mennonite I can say, "What a disappointment!!!!" I listened to the book in its entirety hoping that there would be a redeeming aspect but found none. Rather, I walked away feeling as if this "read" had simply been a cathartic exercise for the author that should not have been published.
Firstly, the book is not written by a Mennonite. The author was reared in a Mennonite home and left the faith as a young woman. Basically, the book is an arrogant, "axe to grind" account of the author's life which was seemingly built on a number of poor choices. Although she periodicallly succeeds to extract humor from some of the situations she recounts, more often the recounts are a harsh, judgmental condemnation of a seemingly well-intentioned group of people (the Mennonites). There is also a imbalance throughout the book as the author is diligent to analyze the actions and characteristics of the Mennonites while failing to do the same with her own. As a result one is left feeling as if there has been a "Mennonite-bashing" with the question of "why".
4 personnes ont trouvé cela utile
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Global4 out of 5 stars
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Interprétation3 out of 5 stars
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Histoire4 out of 5 stars
- Carin
- 17/11/2011
Laughing through tears.
Boy, Rhoda Janzen has bad luck. The schadenfreude alone would be reason to read this memoir, but luckily she also has a sense of humor and a way with words. I hope I'm not giving away too much but you have to or else there's no plot summary at all. Rhoda grew up Mennonite but as an adult, she strayed far afield, becoming a college professor (Mennonites do not approve of higher education), marrying an atheist, not having children. Then she has a medical issue, and the procedure does not go well. To her surprise, her husband is great at nursing her back to health. Then he leaves her for a guy named Bob that he met online. A week later, Rhoda is in a terrible car accident. Unable to really get around (and unable to afford her house payments alone), she moves back in with her parents, temporarily. Which means she becomes reimmersed in Mennonite culture.
Most of us are probably pretty unfamiliar with the Mennonites. They are not the Amish - in fact the Amish split with them centuries ago because the Mennonites were so liberal - but liberal is not a word anyone would use to describe them. Rhoda's church had an outhouse. Her mother had grown up wearing clothes made from flour sacks. Rhoda and her first boyfriend in high school dated for a year without even French kissing - because they had no idea it existed. As someone who has lived fully in the secular world for over 20 years, she is the perfect person to introduce us to Mennonite culture. Also it's refreshing that she didn't have any great falling out with the religion herself - it's just not for her, but she respects her parents' beliefs and still likes the food and hymns.
Throughout the narrative, as small incidents of everyday life are conveyed, Rhoda is healing both physically, and emotionally. We get details of her tumultuous life with her artistic, bipolar husband. Returning home was obviously soothing to her soul as well as her body. And her mother is hilarious. Hilary Huber does a good job is giving the different characters different voices (although all fairly nasal though that's not her normal voice), but Rhoda's mother's voice is the best. The slightly childish aspect of the tone matches up perfectly to her upbeat, effervescent personality.
There is an explanation of the Mennonites at the end of the book.
3 personnes ont trouvé cela utile
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Global4 out of 5 stars
- Susan
- 06/07/2010
Unexpected and funny
I am not sure what I expected but this was a fun listen and at times laugh out loud unexpectedly funny. The narration added a great deal to what otherwise might have been a disjointed "memoir". Somehow her voice and tempo made the transitions easier. I always enjoy hearing words that I know I don't know how to pronouce...half of the food consumed in this book met that definition.
3 personnes ont trouvé cela utile
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Global1 out of 5 stars
- Maureen Leach
- 30/05/2010
Big Disappointment
Expected to get a view of the Mennonites. A terribly boring and inane story instead. Sorry I didn't believe other poor reviews.
3 personnes ont trouvé cela utile
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Global5 out of 5 stars
- Amy
- 03/03/2010
A surprising delight
An funny and quirky look into the life of this author. An excellent "read" and a good job by the narrator. Kept me interested and laughing the whole way through.
3 personnes ont trouvé cela utile
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Global4 out of 5 stars
- Cindy
- 31/07/2010
A fun ride!
This is a fast-paced, charming, smart memoir! GOOD FUN and the narrator easily brings across the irony and humor in the author's story. Great job.
2 personnes ont trouvé cela utile
