#6 and #7: Room and Mennonite in a Little Black Dress (meh)

I read Emma Donoghue's Room and Rhoda Janzen's Mennonite in a Little Black Dress back-to-back in February. Both books had gotten good word of mouth but personally, I wasn't really into either of them (which is perhaps why I put off blogging about them). Warning: A few spoilers in the next paragraph.

Room is the story of a little boy named Jack and his mom, who if I recall correctly never gets a name. Jack is this really happy-go-lucky little kid with boundless enthusiasm for the world - except that he doesn't realize the "world" is a little room, because Jack's mom was kidnapped by a guy they call Old Nick, who keeps them prisoner in a garden shed. To five-year-old Jack, his world is amazing, which we hear as he (torturously) baby-talks his narration; his mom just wants to escape. And eventually they do (too easily, I thought) and Jack and his mother go through all kinds of readjustment issues. And I know I was supposed to think it profound, the contrast in perception and happiness and fear, but I just didn't feel it. (Apparently most Amazon readers did - it has 475 five-star reviews.) Which was too bad - I really enjoyed Donoghue's Slammerkin, a novel that could not be more different in subject or tone, which I read in 2008.

I started Mennonite in a Little Black Dress back in November and put it down probably six times to read other things. In theory, the memoir is about the author's discovery that her husband is gay, quickly followed by a terrible car wreck, which causes her to flee for her parents' home to recuperate. Except that she grew up Mennonite, so she has to go from being big-city sinful back to innocence-ish religious ways - which is supposed to provide much comic fodder and the heart of the book. But in truth, I never really caught onto the storyline because it really jumped around (and admittedly, my lack of attention didn't help) - it was hard to keep up with the chronology and minor characters, like the brothers and sisters-in-law, who weren't well fleshed out. Despite the premise, I don't think I learned anything significant about the Mennonites - in fact, I'm not sure what the book was really about. In the end, it seemed to be more about relating individual witty anecdotes (which were individually funny) but as a whole, I don't think the memoir came together. It simply lacked an overarching story.

So that was my February reading, fairly disappointing...which is perhaps why I didn't finish another book until the beginning of April. :(