Category: memoir

Coming Clean

~ Wendy-Marie ~ Leave a comment

I should be puttering around the apartment getting everything all tidy just in case our unit is one of the randomly selected ones for inspection on Monday. There’s stacks of books on the dining room table, some plastic crates of Blacklight’s things, the laptop cases, the iron and the tote bag of tote bags to stash in my car trunk. The bathroom could also use a clean. The clean dishes should be put away before I need to use them to make Blacklight’s breakfast. Basically, our apartment isn’t spotless but it could use some love.

But after reading Kimberly Rae Miller’s Coming Clean, a memoir of being the child of hoarding parents, my apartment doesn’t seem untidy at all. You can walk across the room without needing to block out what sort of filth and rot strata you’re stepping on. All the plumbing works. We don’t have to eat only sealed convenience food because our kitchen isn’t functional. And once Blacklight lurches into the living room, the only thing keeping him from sitting on Mr Couch will be my reluctance to give up my sprawling throw pillow nest and share the darn thing with him.

As an adult, Kimberly Rae Miller strives to be clean and tidy. Maybe she strives a bit too hard because a dear friend notices that she purges things when she’s upset. But as a child, living in houses packed so full the only working bathroom door couldn’t be shut or not having hot water was her normal. And those conditions weren’t because her parents didn’t know any better. Her father has a genius IQ and a need to collect and retain things most people would call trash. Kimberly’s mother, herself the child of hoarders, initially fights the encroaching tide of things but herself falls victim to depression and hoarding when medical issues cause her to become disabled. From early childhood onward, Kim learns to conceal the mess and paper over with a veneer of perfection. In the days before Hoarders and Hoarding: Buried Alive who would believe the straight A student with all the extracurricular activities was living in extreme conditions that forced the neighbors to complain?

Coming Clean is a slight book but man does it carry an emotional heft. There’s fear, shame, hope and trying to make a difference even when her parents can’t seem to change. You don’t know if you should stop by Home Depot for contractor size roll of huge black trash bags and industrial strength rubber gloves to help Kim rescue her parents from another mess….AGAIN…or if you should grab Kim’s phone, stomp it into bits and implore her to just let her parents rot before it ruins her life so badly that there’s no coming back. But what you should do? Read Coming Clean and give thanks to Kimberly Rae Miller for opening up and exposing the raw wounds of her childhood. If her opening up helps one person dealing with a hoarding loved one or gives them comfort that they are not alone? It’s worth it.

An Open Book

~ Wendy-Marie ~ Leave a comment

There are writers who have a memoir you love and then another and then you wish they would just stop already because if you see their stupid books in the new biography section one more time you are going to scream and really? you need to spend another book writing about your addiction to overpriced shoes and your makeup collection? <wipes brow and takes a few deep breaths> Sorry, still a bit riled up over the latest of Annoying Author’s latest “memoir” cluttering up valuable space and wasting library resources. Back to the proper review. I promise.

Then you have authors who write memoirs and you snap them up because a) they are witty b) well written and c) don’t focus on stupid $200+ ballet flats. Also these authors you need to hunt down like, well…your father after a 12 point buck in during deer season. With great caution and expense. Only you don’t get some people going “EEWWWW” and “hunting is WRONG” when you snag your prey. And my dad? He eats what he gets and venison is delicious, so zip it!  Instead when the book hunter find your prey, you bring it home and curl up on Mr Couch (or Mr Bed if Blacklight is awake and ranting about Richard Dawkins and Minecraft and wrestling) and devour it.  Or you zip to the library after cleaning up the kitchen, grab your inter-library loans and head home because you’re tired and just want to collapse.

And even though you should really take a nap because it was one bleep of a workday and you are doing overtime the next day, you crawl into bed with one of your inter-library loan treasures intending to read for a little bit. And then the next thing you know you’re being pulled from a life as a nurse in training during World War II by a voice asking “who is daddy widdle wedhead?” to the fish tank and “hey are you making that pizza tonight?” to your dazed self.

Okay. That might have been a true story from Friday night. (It was). Blacklight did not get his pizza. He has opposable thumbs and can make his own dinner. How dare he summon me from the pages of Monica Dickens’ autobiography An Open Book? But he’s Blacklight and well, that’s what he does. Now what Monica Dickens’ does? Write awesome books.

An Open Book is British author Monica Dickens’ autobiography. Yes, she related to that Dickens but you get the delightful impression that their relationship (she is his great-granddaughter) doesn’t impress her that much. In fact, when she talks about her experiences promoting her books, the relationship between her and Mr Overrated seems like a burden and something she wishes didn’t exist.

I wonder if anyone coming up to her burbling “You know I loathe Mr Overrated to pieces” would have gotten a broad smile from her. Because if I had lived in her heyday, I would have been that person. Trust me. I met Mr Andrew Leman (co-founder of The HP Lovecraft Historical Society and all around awesome guy) and was that burbling dimwit who could barely form proper sentences like “I would like to buy this t-shirt” and “thank you Mr Leman”. So in my twisted little brain, the fact that Monica Dickens seems “meh” over her distant relationship to the overrated one? So very refreshing because so many other authors would be mentioning that connection every three seconds.

In fact, you could read An Open Book for her experiences promoting her books alone. Anyone who has written a book, or worked in book promotions will smile and remember their own best stories. It’s not the laugh-a minute horrors Grace experiences in promoting Hatto & Hatto’s books in Wendy Holden’s Gossip Hound (US)/Fame Fatale (UK) but it’s a universally familiar one to writers. Emma Chisit, indeed. 🙂

Instead of lingering and hovering over a distant yet important family connection, Monica Dickens weaves a tale of enchantment around life at Number 52. She’s the youngest child of three (older brother, slightly older sister) and the odd duckling in a talented and loving extended family. She goes to school and becomes a debutante but is more on the sidelines then in the first tier of things. Other people fall in love, get married and start families. Monica tries her hand at acting and then cooking professionally.

Now Monica is a nice girl from a nice family who can barely cook. She’s taken a course of six lessons. But she talks her way into being a professional cook/servant and spends many months toiling behind stoves and in cold kitchens. And apart from the occasional successful dish, comes a book about her experiences, One Pair of Hands, which becomes a popular seller. She’s not a best seller but she’s a known quality and now establishing herself as a professional writer.

With World War II, our Monica tries her hand at war work as a nurse, inspiring another popular seller, One Pair of Feet, that horrifies the nursing profession. The black mark of One Pair of Feet, doesn’t stop her from writing. Years pass and her busy pen and typewriter churn out books and articles. Along the way, Monica finds love, a husband of her own and adopts two very lucky little girls. There is sadness though. The war kills her older brother, her parents are getting more fragile and she is torn between her new home, America and the call of her childhood home Number 52.

What truly sticks in the mind besides the behind the scenes gossip of One Pair of Hands and One Pair of Feet are two sections that wrench the heart. If Blacklight wasn’t so busy watching Minecraft videos he might have looked over and saw me sniffling and then just barely fighting back tears. I dare you to pick up An Open Book and read chapters 16 and 21 without reaching for the Kleenex.

Chapter 16 is a brief thing, just a handful of pages about Monica trailing along with social worker. There’s a baby found in a room with only a burned leather couch. Another family ignores the fatal illness of an infant with the mother hoping that she’s pregnant again. Just these few pages had me tearing up as much as all three of Jennifer Worth’s excellent memoirs of her time as midwife.

Chapter 21 deals all too briefly in my opinion, with Monica Dickens’ work with The Samaritans. Now if you’re a Red Dwarf junkie, you know that Rimmer’s stint at the Samaritans is used as a joke in the first few series. Who knew that Monica Dickens helped found the American branch of The Samaritans? Without looking at http://www.samaritansusa.org? And this from a woman who beat herself up emotionally for mishandling her first call even though that caller got help.

Is it any wonder reading An Open Book had me abusing using my beloved inter-library loans with a white hot speed? If only it wasn’t Sunday or I would be headed to the East Hartford Public Library RIGHT NOW to brave their vertigo causing fiction section and not have to wait for the inter-library loan system. Or that Monica Dickens is on my list favorite authors. Unlike Annoying Author, I never wanted to slap Monica, or roll my eyes at her. Instead I wanted to sit down for a cup of tea, eat a scone and go pet her horses. Pity more authors can’t inspire that.

Helene Hanff: Underfoot in Show Business

~ Wendy-Marie ~ Leave a comment

For every big star or even middling star there’s hundreds of people clinging to a slight handhold in show business. Underfoot in Show Business is the story of one of the faceless ones, a mousy little playwright from Philadelphia named Helene Hanff. Now if you’re a certain kind of reader (the spouse: “Angophile NERD! Like you!” Me: death stare from Mr Couch), Helene Hanff is the author of the charming 84, Charing Cross Road.

But between letters to Marks & Co., Helene lived in hall bedrooms and tiny studio apartments, writing plays that lurked in the depths of agents Dead Files, working as an outside studio reader and writing television scripts never quite living up to her initial Big Break.

And what was that pre-84, Charing Cross Road Big Break? A very young Helene Hanff entered the Bureau of New Plays contests. The prize? Two $1,500 fellowships and the guiding hand of the Theatre Guild. And at a stroke of fate, Helene went from passionate theater goer to being a member of the theater itself along the way collecting her lifelong friend/actress Maxine and the seeds of 84, Charing Cross Road.

Even though she never becomes a wild success like the previous fellowship winners Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller, she manages to secure a foothold and never gives up her dreams of becoming a playwright.

This book isn’t targeted to readers like my spouse or brother. Trust me there are plenty of books out there for the pair of them. It’s a book for the theater geeks, the early television geeks and the Helene Hanff fanboys/fangirls. It is a charming look at the last great days of the theater and movies before television took over. If you’re that certain type of reader, then hunt down Underfoot in Show Business. The inter-library loan (my book budget is very modest) is worth it.

Helene Hanff: Q’s Legacy

~ Wendy-Marie ~ Leave a comment

If someone held me down and demanded I tell them exactly who changed my literary life I’d have to reply “Nancy Drew”. Seriously. Everyone’s favorite Titian haired girl detective with a blue roadster set me on a path that mumblemublethirtysomethingmumblemumble years later has me blissful;y curling up on Mr Couch and shooting death glares at Blacklight who innocently rambles through the living room still not understanding that after almost six years of wedded bliss Gwen + book=GO AWAY LEAVE ‘LONE.

For others it might be Spiderman (Blacklight). Or Nero Wolfe (the late Mater). For Helene (84, Charing Cross Road) Hanff her key to the literary world was the British scholar Q, otherwise known as Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch. It was the Depression and Helene wanted an education more than anything else. And in the depths of the library, she found her first book of Q’s lectures and never looked back. Moving from cheap hotel rooms, one room hovels to a brand new studio apartment, the Q lectures and a host of literary classics painstaking acquired from a London secondhand bookshop followed her.

Then in 1970, a collection of the letters between Helene and her unseen friends at the London bookshop was published. And the cult of 84,  Charing Cross Road began. Another book based on her adventures in England in the 84,  Charing Cross Road fever came out. All this because of book a young and knowledge starved young women picked out of the library stacks.

Without Q there was no need to read all the works he reference, no need to turn to a tiny London secondhand bookshop for the things she just couldn’t afford or find in New York City, no letters to the unseen FPD, no 84, Charing Cross Road. And thanks to the 84, Charing Cross Road cult, a visit to watch the filming of the BBC adaptation gives Helene the chance to visit Q’s actual stomping grounds. And even later, the London stage adaptation gives Helene the chance to be the toast of the London theater world. Not too shabby for a little girl from Philadelphia, right?

Q’s Legacy is a book that is best read if you’ve already read 84, Charing Cross Road or seen the television play. If you’ve haven’t read 84, Charing Cross Road then you’ll still get caught up in Helene’s shock and joy as her little book succeeds and her second round of London adventures. Best to read 84, Charing Cross Road and The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street first. Then sit back and enjoy Q’s Legacy and try to resist the urge to roam the stacks of your library and local used and rare bookstore.