It's a clich to say that a good memoir reads like a well-crafted work of fiction, but Kimmel's smooth, impeccably humorous prose evokes her childhood as vividly as any novel. Born in 1965, she grew up in Mooreland Indiana, a place that by some mysterious and powerful mathematical prinicple retains a population of 300, a place where there's no point learning the street names because it's just as easy to say, "We live at the four-way stop sign."
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Hers is less a formal autobiography than a collection of vignettes comprising the things a small child would remember; sick birds, a new bike, reading comics at the drugstore, the mean old lady down the street. The truths of childhood are rendered in lush yet simple prose; here's Zippy describing a friend who hates wearing girls' clothes: "Julie in a dress was like the rest of us in quicksand." Over and over we encounter pearls of third-grade wisdom revealed in a child's assured voice. "There are a finite number of times one can safely climb the same tree in a single day".
Everyone who reads this, will recognize some aspect of their childhood.
The review of this Book prepared by Boppy
