Flat Broke with Two Goats - Now There's a Title!

A raise for whoever thought up that title!  It truly grabs the reader's attention.

I've often had mixed feeling when finishing the last chapter of a memoir.  When someone asks you what you thought of a particular memoir, how fair is it to give your opinion about what happens in the book (the "plot" if you will) and the people in it (the "characters").  I suppose you could take the stance that the author wrote, had published, and is reaping the financial benefit of the book and therefore has opened him or herself up for comment.  But often I find myself judging the people and their actions as I'm reading the memoir, and not always in a good way.  It's one thing to be critical of a fictional character, another to be critical of someone telling you their life story.  

That said, I'll be discussing the writing in Flat Broke with Two Goats: a Memoir of Appalachia, by Jennifer McGaha.   Goodreads' blurb reads: "A charming memoir of one woman’s unexpected journey from country chic to backwoods barnyard."  "Charming" is not the word I'd use.  Anything that involves domestic violence, foreclosure, marital separation, and oh yes, venomous copperhead snakes in the kitchen is not charming.  Eventful, definitely, but not charming.

There are really two parts to the memoir - before the foreclosure of Jennifer and her husband's home outside Asheville, NC, and after as they must both make decisions about what kind of lives they want to live.  Before involves a bad and violent first marriage, and a second marriage, and children, and it details the family's fall from affluence during the great recession of the 2000s.  Afterward, Jennifer briefly separates from her husband, unwilling to follow him to their new home, an old and decaying mountain cabin a mile from the main road without many of the comforts most of us take for granted.  She returns after a few months and they slowly work on repairing the house, the land, and their marriage.  That's where the goats come in.  If you ever wanted to know whether two people with no farming experience can successfully raise a herd of goats, this is the book for you!  

The author does do a fine job of writing about the beauty of the mountains and the deep-rooted family pull the Appalachians have on her. 

"There, in a mossy hollow, three springs emptied into a creek that gathered momentum as it flowed down the mountainside.  I loved knowing that - that the waterfall was higher than I had ever imagined, that it sprang from the earth in a place where the soil was rich and loamy, that the part I could see from my porch was just a small fraction of the whole.  Watching the sun dip behind the mountain and the moon rise high in the sky, I realized that the waterfall I saw in front of me was not the exact waterfall I would see tomorrow.  It was continually reborn, renewed, restored....what I did now know without a doubt was that I was not alone, that I had never been alone, that the people who came before me were still here, would always be here."

I wish that she had incorporated more of the story of her grandparents and other ancestors; we barely get to know about them, but they're quite interesting and there's definitely a story there (perhaps for her next book?). 

Library Loot

This week's loot!

Queen of Scots: the True Life of Mary Stuart, by John Guy. "A long-overdue and dramatic reinterpretation of the life of Mary, Queen of Scots by one of the leading historians at work today."  This book won the Whitbread award for biography in 2004.  My question when checking it out from the library was: Is it as good as Antonia Fraser's biography?  It's interesting (hard not to be with her scandal-ridden life), very readable, and detailed without being dull.  But.  The author wears his heart on his sleeve and gives Mary the benefit of every possible doubt.  Fraser's is a more even-handed portrayal, and remains the gold standard. 






Library Loot courtesy of The Silly Little Mischief Blog

Briefly Reviewed - Prairie Fires

Title:  Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder

Author:  Caroline Fraser
Edition:  Metropolitan Books, 2017
Setting:  American West
Genre:   Non Fiction

Never out of print, made into a television show, Laura Ingalls Wilder's "Little House" books are a well-known part of American culture.  If you've read "Pioneer Girl: The Annotated Biography" you may not think "Prairie Fires" would have anything left to tell.  But it does, very much so.  Caroline Fraser has done a tremendous amount of research in order to provide historical context for Laura Ingalls Wilder's life and writing. 

And there's so much here you've never read before, or perhaps you've read something in Wilder's books or about her life, but not really understood the ramifications of it.  I, as an example, never realized how truly poor the Wilder family was, nor how dependent they were on others for the betterment of their lives.  Fraser points out how much the "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" philosophy stated in Wilder's books is in contrast to all the help they got: free land from the government, clothing from missionary barrels, help from friends and neighbors.  And Pa, the upstanding citizen?  Well, there was that midnight flight from the debts he owed in Iowa.  Funny how that never made it into the books.  Which brings me to another excellent aspect of Fraser's work: the actual writing of Wilder's books.  The tug of war between daughter (and oh, my! What a difficult and unlikable person she was!) and mother over what to write and how to present Laura's pioneer experiences is examined in depth.  That's quite a fascinating story. 

While discussing difficult and hard truths, Fraser never loses respect for Wilder's work and shows great understanding of her times and character.  If you'd like to read a well-researched, very accessible book that not only puts Wilder's life and work in historical context and perspective, but also let's you come as close to the real Laura as you'll ever get, this is that book.  Highly recommended. 

I received a copy from the publisher as part of the Library Thing Early Reviewers program.

Briefly Reviewed

Title: The Last Lost Girl

Author:  Maria Hoey
Edition: Poolbeg Crimson;  July, 2017
Setting:  Ireland, 1960s
Genre:  Mystery

 
This is the story of an Irish family (mother, father, and three sisters) whose lives change forever in the summer of 1976.   A dual timeline story, it follows the three girls in 1976 as the summer progresses toward the social event the eldest (Lilly) looks forward to.  Lilly is 15 and pushing boundaries.  Gayle, the middle daughter desperately seeks approval from everyone.  Jacqueline, the youngest, spies on her sisters.  Dad drinks more than he should, and the mother has aspirations to a better life.  All of this leads toward a family tragedy that Jacqueline tries to unravel as an adult.  This was a very well-written book - the sisters' characters are sharply defined as early as the first chapter - with lovely prose.  The story kept my attention; I burned through it over a weekend.  I didn't find the characters unlikeable; I found them to be deeply human with the strengths and faults so many people have.  I received a copy from the publisher.

Title: The Marriage Bureau

Author:  Penrose Halson
Edition: HarperCollins Publisher, May 2017
Setting: Britain
Genre:  Non-Fiction

This non-fiction book was a very enjoyable read. It's the story of two friends who started a marriage bureau in London just before the outbreak of WWII. Using material from a company archive (and how fortunate that these materials had been saved!), the author presents matchmaking stories that are funny, sad, touching, and occasionally outrageous or heartrending. The ins and outs of how the matchmakers dealt with their clients - and what a variety of clients they were - is fascinating. And the matchmakers themselves were quite unusual characters too. If you enjoyed Call the Midwife or Home Fires, this is the book for you. I received a copy from the publisher.