Heather D. reviewed on 9/14/2007 + 36 more book reviews

Helpful Score: 3

The first paragraph of Chapter 1 begins: "I grew up thinking my mother had the answer to everything. Watch any black-and-white film and she always knew some obscure fact about an actor with one line. `See the fishmonger behind the ox, the one who's yelling, "Slay the hunchback!" she'd say. `His name was Skids Monroe. He came out of the Yiddish theater and was tragically maimed in a Ferris wheel accident."` From a reader's point of view, I like paragraphs like this because you start in one place (in front of a household television) and end up somewhere completely unexpected (the scene of a Ferris wheel ride gone awry). This particular example may be a touch morbid, but you have to admit, it's also interesting. Thankfully, Amy's mom knew others things as well, like words. "`The term "steatopygous" means characterized by fat around the hips,'" Amy recalls her mother saying in paragraph two. "It was once considered not cellulite, but a highly desirable benchmark of fertility! Remember that the next time you say you look hideous in a bathing suit."

"The Late Bloomer's Revolution" is filled with chuckle-worthy moments like this, which makes it all the more heart wrenching when, for instance, Amy's mother finally succumbs to her illness. I would lament the end of a relationship in one moment, then laugh at Cohen's ability to bring humor to a bad situation in the next. For instance, one day she went to the dry cleaners only to have the service woman greet her with "Oh God! What that on your face? You burn in grease fire?" - which is how Amy discovered the onset of a serious rash that marred her face and kept her homebound for almost a year. Yet despite such upheavals Amy's humor shines through, turning what could have been a "look at all the awful things that have happened to me" memoir into a poignant, thought-provoking account of one woman's search for love in New York city.

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