by jphilo | Mar 31, 2010 | Reviews
If Jeanette Walls’ memoir, The Glass Castle captivated you like it did me, then you’ve been waiting for her second book since you finished the first one. Well, your wait is over. Half Broke Horses, her new novel about her maternal grandmother, is here.
After finishing Glass Castle, many readers wanted to know more about Walls’ eccentric mother, Rose Mary. According to the author interview at the end of the audiobook, Jeannette took their advice and began interviewing her mother to gather material for a second non-fiction book. During the interviews, her mother suggested the book be about her mother, Lily Casey Smith, who was a real character.
When Walls began writing, still determined to write about her mother’s life, her grandmother’s voice dominated the story. Finally, Walls succumbed to the sheer force of Grandma Lily’s personality and wrote about her instead.
Lily didn’t have much childhood on her family’s desolate New Mexico ranch. With a mother who considered herself too much of a fine lady for farm labor and a gimpy father with a severe speech impediment, Lily grew up fast. At a young age she learned to break horses, care for her younger siblings, and squeeze in school when she could. Eventually, she became a teacher, moved to Chicago, then moved back to New Mexico.
She was an intelligent, opinionated, hard-working, penny-pinching woman. When she decided to do something, no one could stop her. Teaching was always her fall back career, but along the way she worked as a maid, married a bigamist, raced horses as a jockey, sold moonshine, became a landlord in Phoenix, and spied on her husband. She preferred driving cattle or the hearse she used as a school bus over cooking and laundry. And one of the great pleasures of her life was taking out her false teeth and showing them off to strangers.
Because the book is based on secondhand recollections from Rose Mary and Jeannette’ sketchy memories of Grandma Lily, who died when Walls was eight, the author calls the book a novel. But it’s written from the first person perspective of Lily and reads like a memoir.
Though it wasn’t as captivating as Glass Castle, I still enjoyed Half Broke Horses. Lily reminded me of the tough, wiry characters in Camp Crook, South Dakota where we lived for seven years. Apparently, something about living in remote, dry areas of the west encourages people to cultivate their inner eccentricity and put it on display. By the time you finish reading it, you’ll have a better understanding of the lifestyle Rose Mary adopted as an adult. And every now and then, when you think about Lily Casey Smith, you’ll chuckle and laugh out loud. She’s ranch country personified, and an unforgettable character.
Thank you, Jeannette Walls, for sharing your grandmother with your fans.
by jphilo | Mar 23, 2010 | Reviews
Steven Frye and Hugh Laurie have been a favorite comedy team at our house since the Jeeves and Wooster series first aired on Masterpiece Theater in the 1990s. Our kids grew up watching the dramatizations of P.G. Wodehouse’s comic novels about life in upper class English society between the two wars. In each episode, savvy butler Jeeves, impeccably brought to life by Steven Frye, extricates Hugh Laurie’s character, the empty-headed yet thoroughly likable Bertie Wooster, from whatever predicament he’d gotten himself into.
The two actors were a matched pair, playing off one another with the kind of timing born from years of performing together. But I didn’t know they’d been a comedy team before their Jeeves and Wooster days until my son told me about them. “You should watch them, Mom. They’re hilarious.”
Taking his advice, I decided to check out A Bit of Frye and Laurie, Season 3 to watch with my daughter and her fiance over spring break. The three of us snickered and sniggered, giggled and guffawed for an entire evening, delighted by their humor which is as funny today as when the show aired in the 1980s.
Between Laurie’s rubber face and Frye’s quiet understatement, the men are a delight to watch. They do mostly solo man (or woman) on the street bits and two-man sketches, bringing in bit players when necessary. They alter their looks with wigs, glasses and costumes with skill reminiscent of The Carol Burnett Show. The duo takes advantage of Laurie’s musical ability, working a piano or guitar into at least one sketch in each episode.
The sexual content in their humor increases with each season of the show, so be forewarned and have the remote handy to skip ahead to the comedy gems. Just be sure to relieve yourself before you start watching. It’s embarrassing to laugh so hard you wet your pants. When these two perform at their best, it just might happen!
by jphilo | Mar 18, 2010 | Reviews
For the past few weeks, I’ve been watching the first season of the 1980s sitcom Cheers. The cover note said the series debuted in 1982. Since Allen was born in May of ’82 and most of his first year of life is a blur, I can’t figure out why I remember so many of the episodes.
The premier season is as funny as it was in 1982. But how did a sit com set in Cheers, a fictitious Boston bar, weather the test of time? First of all, the writing is excellent, with few words wasted. The dialogue drives the plot forward and adds dimension to the characters. And even though some unexpected event is foreshadowed and expected in almost every episode, the writers cleverly sneak them in and take viewers by surprise.
And the acting, Oh, the acting. Whoever cast Shelly Long as snobby, academic Diane Chambers, the woman we ordinary folk love to hate, was a genius. The same could be said about casting Ted Danson as the owner of Cheers, Sam Malone, the womanizing, dumb jock, former Red Sox pitcher and recovered alcoholic. These two main characters play off one another beautifully and the attraction between them builds as the first season progresses.
The rest of the actors create a nearly flawless supporting cast. Rhea Perlman plays Carla, the feisty and fertile barmaid who is Diane’s exact opposite, to a tee. George Wendt portrays Norm, the beer-guzzling and often out-of-work accountant, who shouldn’t be likable but is. John Ratzenberger’s character, postman Cliff Clavin who has a confabulated fact for every subject, is much less visible in the first season than in succeeding ones and much easier to stomach. By far, the best performance in this outstanding cast comes from Nicholas Colastanto as Ernie “Coach” Pantusso, a former Red Sox pitching coach hit in the head by a few too many baseballs. He tends bar with Sam and delivers his lines with sweetly innocent befuddlement and perfect timing.
The series evolved over the years, as all series do. In my opinion, it lost much of it’s spark after Long left in 1987. I know some people object to a sit com set in a bar and the steamy love affair that develops between Sam and Diane in the final episode of Season One. But it’s such a gem in so many ways, I plan to watch Season Two, also.
Along with all the regulars at Cheers, I want to be where everybody knows my name.
by jphilo | Mar 10, 2010 | Reviews
Do you remember early in the 2000s, when the US Army and NATO forces overthrew the Taliban, and the west was optimistic about Afghanistan’s future? Khaled Hosseini’s first novel, The Kite Runner, closed as the war was being won and his exiled family prepared to return to the country they loved.
Kabul Beauty School by Deborah Rodriguez and Kristin Ohlson takes place during those hopeful times, too. Rodriguez, a hairdresser from Holland, Michigan, first went to Afghanistan after 9/11 as part of a humanitarian organization. While there, she conceived the idea of starting a beauty school in the country to train poor women and enable them to earn an income for their families.
The plight and oppression of women in Afghanistan unfolds as the story progresses. The futures of the beauty school graduates seems bright, but time after time their hopes are dashed by arranged marriages, abusive husbands and ruined reputations. Rodriguez herself is a deeply flawed person, impulsive and lacking in judgement, as her train wreck of a marriage to an already married Afghan man showed. But she is also courageous, indomitable, and resourceful. And she’s certainly done more for Afghan women than most Americans have.
She’s received some bad press since leaving Afghanistan in 2007 after her son received a kidnapping threat. The women left behind say she’s abandoned them and reneged on promises she made when they agreed to share their stories in the book. Rodriguez says she hasn’t forgotten them, but she must rebuild her life in the United States before she can help them. You can learn more about Debbie Rodriguez and download the afterward she’s since written for her book at www.debbierodriguez.com
Kabul Beauty School is a book worth reading, not because it’s beautifully written or presents a heroine worthy of emulation. It’s worth reading because we are citizens of the world and need to be disturbed by the lives of the oppressed and downtrodden women of Afghanistan. We may not be able to help them, but their story should spur us to find and help hurting women where we live.
by jphilo | Feb 11, 2010 | Reviews
Though winter along our gravel road has been long, snowy and cold, it does come with a few perks. One of my favs, and Hiram’s too, is more evenings at home for watching movies. Last week, I picked up two flicks at the library. The first, Marley and Me, was okay but not nearly as good as the book that inspired it.
But the second movie, Second Chance Harvey, which I chose soley because the leads were played by Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson, was an absolute gem. The film was the story of two losers. Hoffman’s character was washed up, divorced commercial jingle writer who traveled to London for his daughter’s wedding. Thompson played a lonely, single woman on the verge of middle age, the only child of an overly possessive and kooky mother.
The two meet by chance in Heathrow airport and the movie details the gradual unfolding of their relationship and the healing of their hearts. Hoffman and Thompson’s performances are quiet and nuanced, achingly sweet. The characters are rumpled and real, with graying hair, crows’ feet, and poochy stomachs. Maybe I’d never heard of it because the general public found the movie dull. After all, it’s devoid of sex, foul language, women dressed as sex objects, violence, car chases, guns, and bullets. For the life of me, I can’t figure out why it has a PG-13 rating.
But don’t get the idea this is a chick flick. Hiram loved it and keeps asking what good movie we should watch next. And therein lies the problem. Second Chance Harvey was so good, I’m not sure it can be topped.
So if you have any suggestions about what we should watch this Valentine’s weekend, with another snowstorm on the way, please let me know. My recommendation to you is easy: Second Chance Harvey with Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson. It’s a winner.
by jphilo | Feb 9, 2010 | Reviews
Mary DeMuth’s spiritual memoir, Thin Places, proves that appearances can be deceiving. To look at the photograph of the author’s laughing, joyful face, readers would guess she doesn’t have a care in the world.
But as they journey with DeMuth to the thin places of her past and peer through the cracks of her childhood, they may marvel that she didn’t fall through and disappear from sight. Her revelations are startling as she goes deep within herself to narrate the story through the eyes of the child she used to be. From this viewpoint she describes her family’s disfunction with candor, grace and a lack of condemnation.
More touching than her lack of rancor is her steadfast belief in God’s sovereignty over the thin places that dogged her early life. Now an adult and deeply in love with the Father who protected her from great evil, she shares how He worked and continues to work in her life. She rejoices in His ability to use what others meant for evil to do good, even to prepare her to reach out to other victims of the same childhood sorrows she endured.
DeMuth doesn’t recount the thin places in her past and ignore the present. This book is no happily-ever-after fairy tale or follow-my-example-sinner sermon. Instead, she confesses her human frailties – a constant need to refocus on God rather than on self, her reliance upon daily confession and God’s forgiveness – and shows how the Father allows her to see His face in the thin places of life.
DeMuth writes with her customary readable, approachable style that echoes Philip Yancey’s. Skillfully, she reveals the source of her joy: her faith in a Savior who loved her enough to die for her and for those responsible for creating thin places in her life.
Thin Places is a book worth reading. While reading it, I learned to find the face of the Father and the joy of the Son in the thin places of my life. I pray that you will, too.
