John S. (Seajack) reviewed on 12/29/2009 + 347 more book reviews

Helpful Score: 12

Maybe I'm just sated with the memoir thing? Or, maybe this one really just doesn't quite live up to the hype? I'll split the difference and go with "both".
Janzen is a good writer, and she can be funny, and moving. However, I found the timing "off" in her delivery. We get it that he left you "for a guy from gay-dot-com named 'Bob'." We got it the very first time even! If we hadn't gotten it the next dozen or so times that it came up in the book, the phrase might've been cute; we did though, and it wasn't. Moreover, Bob is a helluva lot more of a mainstream name than Rhoda, IMHO. For those who think this may have come as a real shock, the author mentions, in passing late in the book, that she knew her husband was bisexual when they married. She mentions repeatedly that her father is "very good looking" and later writes off dating Mennonite men because "they aren't good looking"; I'm not sure I really want to explore that further, but there it was.
Unlike Feroozeh Dumas' memoirs of being Iranian-American, I wasn't so sure that Janzen wasn't inviting the readership to laugh at Mennonite culture, rather than "with" it? The humor in the book seemed forced at times to me - like a vaudevillian terrified of losing his audience, which lessened the impact of the serious stuff she brought up about 3/4 of the way through the book. Introduced earlier, it would've made more of (the intended) impact.

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