Wednesday, August 16, 2017

Simply from Scratch by Alicia Bessette - Book Review


Simply from Scratch  by Alicia Bessette
Dutton 2010

Format? Hardback

Source? picked up on a sale table somewhere some time ago...from my TBR shelves as I was cleaning out.

Why?  I was looking for something light...but not too light.  Something about someone (female protagonists are best for me it seems) who is damaged but is strong enough to muddle through somehow.  

Title? literal and figurative meaning.
  
Cover?  I'm a cover freak.  The cover of Simply from Scratch almost made me put it in the library box.  The cover makes you think the book will be about a young mother baking in the kitchen with her pink pinstripe apron and Uggish looking boots on.  Thankfully the little excerpt at the bottom indicates the book is about grief and friendship...and of course the inside cover blurb confirms that.
I don't recall a single thing about Uggs in this book...as a matter of fact, I wouldn't think Uggs would be suitable for the snowy weather in Massachusetts.
Zell never wears a pink apron either...she actually wears Nick's camouflage one.

What Now?
I looked to see if Alicia Bessette has written anything else, but all I could find was a reprint of what seemed like the same story as Simply from Scratch...but renamed A Pinch of Love? Or the other way around?

Goodreads suggested Starting from Scratch by Susan Gilbert-Collins so I've added it to my Wishlist :)

Golden Lines

"Aye," I say in Captain Ahab Voice - that of a sloshed but kindly pirate. "Let it burn.  Yer a saucy wench, Rose-Ellen." (2)


For a couple of years now, my heart does this weird thing, at weird times.  Like now: four in the morning.  The weird heart thing is sort of like being a widow - familiar by now, and yet completely foreign. (13)


Nick was one of those guys who always knew he'd get married, buy a house, and get a dog.  He accomplished all three tasks in exactly that order. (51)

Ye Olde Home Ec Witch pinches Ingrid's cheek.  "How did you get here, Pumpkin Pie?" (79)

I'm crying as hard as I did when I found out Nick was gone.  I have no idea what prompts the sobs.  They just come.  And whoever says it takes one year to recover from the death of a spouse is crazier than I am.  Balls. (95)

Nick turned and locked his grey eyes on E.J. (152)

I'm five feet from Ahab.  Four feet.  I hear his teeth chatter.  I see muscles quiver under his fur as snowflakes land there. 
Three feet.  I reach out my arm.  "Cookie time, Cappy," I whisper.  My fingers are one foot from his rump. "Please." (187)

As I get up to leave, she throws both arms around me, rests her chin on my head, and steers me to the door. "Well, Zell, there's only one thing I know that's harder than death," she says.  She helps me into my coat.  "And it seems to me like you're doing a pretty decent job at it."
"What's that?" I say, yanking on my mittens.
"Life." (223)

Red hat against blue, blue sky. 
I know where she is. (250)

"I've got to start from scratch now," says Zell, her voice quiet and steady.  "Every day.  Every minute, it seems." (291)

We are all connected. (298)

Summary

Rose Ellen Carmichael Roy (Zell) lost her husband Nick in a freak accident in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.  Their lives had been mapped out perfectly, high school sweethearts married, promising artistic careers started, and greyhound dog rescued...until The Trip. 
It's been a year, but Zell's life has not progressed much since the day she found out Nick was gone. 
She's pretty much going through the motions and still numb when she meets her 9 year old neighbor, Ingrid, whose mother left shortly after she was born.
 Ingrid is quite precocious and is enamored with TV personality Polly Pinch.  Ingrid convinces Zell to enter a Polly Pinch baking contest with her, and they begin spending a lot of time together.  
Zell begins to breath again, albeit slowly, and some days are one step forward and two steps back.
But she is breathing.
Life is by no means easy for Zell, Ingrid, or any of the other characters in this snowy but warm little Massachusetts community, but they do the best they can to bring closure to the tragedy that took Nick's life and pull together as they always have in the past.


What I Liked

Zell - Rose Ellen Carmichael Roy

Loved that Zell and Nick were high school sweethearts in a small town and they are still adult friends with their high school friends...such history with one another.  


Ingrid - "I love ya and I like ya"...one of my favorite sayings from a character ever :) 


Ingrid's dad- Garret Knox - a good guy...pretty trusting at first to leave his kid with a neighbor he hasn't even met, but after that, a really nice guy.

Ingrid's allergy to peanuts - this was an obvious foreshadowing for a major event...but I still enjoyed it.

Captain Ahab - dog - I'm a dog lover!  And I love it so much when an author integrates breed details into a story - Ahab is a greyhound...a rescued one at that.  They can only let him off leash in enclosed areas due to his prior training of chasing the rabbit.  All he knows is to run.  


Zell's job - draws medical illustrations for a living - so very unique!


Hank the skeleton - loved this detail :) 


Memory Smacks - Zell the widow...her personality, her daily routine, her loneliness, her pain.  Bessette really go this part right...I could feel Zell's pain in my own chest on many occasions.  



Ye Olde Home Ec Witch - Mrs. Chaffin - Trudy - I'd like to be Trudy someday...no cares at all about what anyone thinks or thought of me...my chainsaw in hand doing what I do best...and proud of it.


Massachusetts - snow - Bessette described these portions well too...I could feel the cold, see the snow (what little experience I have with it), not just its beauty but the possibility of serious danger as well.


Nick's emails - a way to get to know Nick...I did feel as I read Nick's emails that the Nick in the emails didn't really match Zell's memories of Nick...of course Nick was growing as a person on The Trip, and maybe that's why?

What I Didn't Like

Ingrid's mom - who leaves her child?  I realize there are reasons sometimes...but Ingrid's mom doesn't have one that in my mind makes any sense.  

Celebrity Chef Polly Pinch - Meals in a Cinch - Polly Pinch was a little over the top for me...way too sweet and way too silly, not to mention her unforgivable secret.


All the pirate talk was a little overdone I thought, but then I remembered that I talk like my dog all the time. Oy.


The Trip - the accident was crazy...wow.

Nick and Zell's friend E.J. thinks he should have died instead of Nick.  Many of their friends were on The Trip as well, so I was never sure why Bessette decided to give E.J.  alternating sections in each chapter.  I thought about it on my review while writing this post and still couldn't figure out what I was missing.  :(  

Zell's heart "condition" and the lead up to a very flat ending seemed out of place to me.  Her palpitations sounded like panic to me...and it would have made total sense for it to end out that way...


The present in the oven...no way in the world I could have not opened it.

Mr. Bedard's cat :( 

Overall Recommendation

This book was my first read that caught my attention after my reading funk.  I'm drawn right now to books about women who crawl their way back from trauma of some kind.  Zell is a survivor.  One day at a time with the help of her friends.


The Author




Alicia Bessette


Website



Monday, August 14, 2017

Book Review - Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance




Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance
HarperCollins 2016
Format? Hardback
Source? from the Library

Why?  I'm a sucker for cultural analysis and memoirs...and studied working class literacy in grad school.

Title? Being from the deep South, Mississippi, I'm very well acquainted with the "hillbilly elegy" as it were...my home state follows me everywhere.  I was also aware of the Appalachian Hill people's struggles and the opioid epidemic that threatens not just their livelihoods but their lives...and is beginning to threaten the lives of many across the U.S.  Hillbillies were lured in and are being snuffed out...are snuffing themselves out...they are dying...and there's no way out for many.
  
Cover?  Not really anything special...I didn't see the American flag until I looked back at the cover to type up my reflections here...but maybe that's exactly the point.

What Now? Return the book to the library, pay my rather large overdue fine, and then buy the dang book like I should have in the first place.
Oy.

Golden Lines

"The people of Breathitt hated certain things, and they didn't need the law to snuff them out." (16)

Mamaw never spent a day in high school.  She'd given birth to and buried a child before she could legally drive a car. (35)

Even in death, Papaw had one foot in Ohio and another in the holler (105)

To my grandparents, the goal was to get out of Kentucky and give their kids a head start.  The kids, in turn, were expected to do something with that head start.  It didn't quite work out that way. (36)

Seeing people insult, scream, and sometimes physically fight was just a part of our life.  After a while, you didn't even notice it. (73)

Mom would officially retain custody, but from that day forward I lived in her house only when I chose to - and Mamaw told me that if Mom had a problem with the arrangement, she could talk to the barrel of Mamaw's gun.  This was hillbilly justice, and it didn't fail me. (78)

The people who ran the courthouse were different from us.  The people subjected to it were not. (79)

One of the questions I loathed, and that adults always asked, was whether I had any brothers or sisters.  When you're a kid, you can't wave your hand, say, "It's complicated," and move on. (81)

The fallen world described by the Christian religion matched the world I saw around me: one where a happy car ride could quickly turn to misery, one where individual misconduct rippled across a family's and a community's life.  When I asked Mamaw if God loved us, I asked her to reassure me that this religion of ours could still make sense of the world we lived in.  I needed reassurance of some deeper justice, some cadence or rhythm that lurked beneath the heartache and chaos. (87)

Mom flailing and screaming in the street was the culmination of things I hadn't seen.  She'd begun taking prescription narcotics not long after we moved to Preble County. I believe the problem started with a legitimate prescription, but soon enough, Mom was stealing from her patients and getting so high that turning an emergency room into a skating rink seemed like a good idea (113) 

Mamaw could spew venom like a Marine Corps drill instructor, but what she saw in our community didn't just piss her off.  It broke her heart. Behind the drugs, and the fighting matches, and the financial struggles, these were people with serious problems, and they were hurting. (142)

Depending on her mood, Mamaw was a radical conservative or a European-style social Democrat...I quickly realized that in Mamaw's contradictions lay great wisdom. (142)

It would be years before I learned that no single book, or expert, or field could fully explain the problems of hillbillies in modern America.  Our elegy is a sociological one, yes, but it is also about psychology and community and culture and faith (145)

Though we sing the praises of social mobility, it has its downsides.  The term necessarily implies a sort of movement - to a theoretically better life, yes, but also away from something.  And you can't always control the parts of your old life from which you drift. (206)

But there is enormous value in what economists call social capital.  It's a professor's term, but the concept is pretty simple: The networks of people and institutions around us have real economic value.  They connect us to the right people, ensure we have opportunities, and impart valuable information.  Without them, we're going it alone. (214)

Whether I made it (the cut for membership in the Yale Law School Journal) or not isn't the point.  What mattered was that, with a professor's help, I had closed the information gap.  It was like I learned to see. (217)

Nothing compares to the fear that you're becoming the monster in your closet. (224)

Summary

J.D. Vance should have ended up like all the others who grew up around him in poverty, with drug addictions, and jobless.  He should have been "stuck"; however, with the fierceness of the people around him, he was able to move out and up.  His story should end with graduating from Yale Law School, and he should be considered a successful story of pulling oneself up by one's bootstraps.  The problem with that stereotype is that it doesn't take into consideration the consequences growing up within a failing culture that is America's white working class.  The idea of "just getting out" isn't as simple as many want it to be.  The crisis that Vance describes in Appalachia isn't one that can be shaken off and forgotten.  Vance does an incredible job of showing that to readers.  Upward mobility isn't just a social climb that can be affected by geography.  There are much deeper issues within which to delve if we are to address the crisis of working class whites, including psychological, cultural, social, medical, and educational issues to name only a few.  Yes, J.D. Vance is a success.  Yes, he made it out.  But, his story and many others like it were far from over as they crossed state lines.     
What I Liked

The historical details - Appalachian Regional Commission/ Lyndon Johnson
Jackson, KY to Ohio via Route 23
the migratory flow between Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan
growing up in the "holler" catching "minners" and "crawdads"
Kentucky coal country
Middletucky
Hatfields and McCoys in Appalachia compared to The Sopranos

Ron Selby, the Advanced Math teacher - "I had that kid in class; he's not smart enough to make a functioning bomb."

Mamaw - As harsh as Mamaw Blanton's language (conversation with J.D. about why he was not gay made me laugh out loud, snort and spit my coffee fashion ;) ) and life could be, she loved her grandchildren...and had a truly soft heart for anyone in need.  She definitely lived the "take care of everybody" lifestyle and loved to "spend time with those babies."
Mamaw made sure J.D. had anything he needed, any time, any place.  
What an unconditional love this woman had for her grandson.

Papaw - Despite his "bullshits" and his grouchiness, he never met a hug or kiss that he didn't welcome. (108)
Papaw also loved J.D.  In fact, he was J.D.'s father since his own biological father nor any of his mother's potential candidates could or would step up.  Papaw taught J.D. how to shoot so well that in the Marine Corp, J.D.  qualified with an M16 rifle as an expert.  He also played math games with J.D. after a young J.D. came home one day worried about his lack of math skills.  
When Papaw died, J.D. spoke at his funeral:
I stood up in that funeral home resolved to tell everyone just how important he was.  "I never had a dad," I explained.  "But Papaw was always there for me, and he taught me the things that men needed to know." 

Discussion of Religion - Organized religion was not something J.D.'s family nor many of the other families he knew spent much time on.  This fact calls into question yet another stereotype about working class southern "conservatives."  Despite the stereotype, J.D.'s biological father and his new family were the only real religious families that J.D. ever knew. 
Mamaw reassured J.D. that God never leaves your side.  She believed that without a doubt, but she also believed that God helps the man who helps himself.   
Mamaw believed it was fine to pray to God for help with your problems, but you best be ready to do the work on your part as well.

Psychological focus - Once J.D. became successful and "escaped" the trap, he had to deal with the conundrum of still seeing in himself some of the very behaviors he had worked so hard to get away from.  Especially where relationships were concerned, J.D. had to re-learn much of what had been unconsciously taught to him during his childhood.  
In Hillbilly Elegy, J.D. presents rich research and sources to explain this phenomenon:
"Significant stress in early childhood results in hyperresponsive or chronically activated physiologic stress response, along with increased potential for fear and anxiety.
the part of the brain that deals with stress and conflict is always activated...the switch flipped indefinitely." (228)

Educational focus - Even though J.D. received access to higher education via his service in the military, he needed more...and that doesn't mean just money.  What so many see as common knowledge parts of the educational system are huge stumbling blocks to students who come in from the outside.  The Ivory Tower isn't famous for welcoming outsiders and is well-known to throw gatekeeping devices in students' way.  J.D. wasn't asking for special favors either.  He honestly didn't realize what he even needed to ask for help with.  Academics wasn't the problem.  The largest roadblock was the system itself - institutional, political, and social...and much of it unconscious or accidental...the roadblocks of privilege.

J.D. Vance's book made me pull back out some of my old textbooks on working class literacy...I haven't done that since I finished my last degree because I was exhausted with academia.  
For the first time in many years, my research brain is piqued, and I'm ready to re-visit some of those theories.

What I Didn't Like

There really wasn't anything about Vance's memoir that I didn't like as far as the book itself...there were more than a few things that made me very sad...so sad that I had to think about, analyze, and really process before writing my review.  But, again, I think that's Vance's point.

I wasn't crazy about J.D.'s mama...I don't "fault" her really, but I don't "forgive" her either.  
He was just a child, and he needed his mama.  But, she wasn't there.  She had a lot of extenuating circumstances, but that doesn't change the fact that she wasn't there.
I was and am beyond glad that J.D. had other people around him to take care of him.  
J.D.'s mom did have a library card and made sure he had access to books.  She herself became a nurse and cared deeply about "enterprises of the mind"...she was one of those moms who got carried away "revamping" a science fair project. 
Her own lack of education about how a man should treat a woman was unfortunately handed down to her own children tenfold and exacerbated by her quest to find a suitable father for J.D. and Lindsay..."adventures" which pulled them further and further away from being able to live within a stable family environment.
And, then, there were the drugs.  Drugs for which she was probably given a prescription but very quickly lost control of.
Addiction is a huge issue...a crisis of epidemic proportions.

Overall Recommendation
Americans tend to have pretty egocentric views about the world and even within our own borders.  Vance's book Hillbilly Elegy reminded me a lot of Jeannette Walls The Glass Castle, two books I think everybody needs to experience.  

The Author





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