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From the Hardcover edition.
A memoir of comedic holiday misadventure.
Memoirist Rouse (At Least in the City Someone Would Hear Me Scream: Misadventures in Search of the Simple Life, 2009, etc.) mashes up a lifetime of holiday debacles into a single book. Virtually every known celebration—from Christmas to Arbor Day—is exploited for humor's sake, and the author relies primarily on quick wit and artistic license to evoke a response from the reader. The results are mixed, particularly due to Rouse's insistence on alienating much of his readership. To be fair, no one is spared the sharp barbs of his jokes—not rural family members, the obese, the ugly, or even Helen Keller—though some readers could interpret this oversimplification of humanity as a form of elitism or snobbery. When describing his chivalrous decision not to drink in front of his recovering-alcoholic partner, he wrote that to do otherwise would be "like those husbands who continue to bring their eight-hundred-pound wives honey buns and two-liter jugs of Mountain Dew before...their spouses are airlifted out of the trailer park." Similarly, his pronouncement that "[i]f there is not a quality coffeehouse every one hundred feet, you're either driving in rural America or visiting a place you need to get the hell out of" is further fodder for anti-elitists. Rouse is most successful when he shows his heart alongside his humor. In "The Wonder Years," he discusses how he and his partner opened their home for a dying dog, forcing them to glimpse their own mortality in the process, and "My Holiday Miracle" explores Rouse's attempt at comforting his mother as she nears death. Both of these essays offer rare, unrestricted access into the author's emotional world.
An unbalanced collection of occasionally humorous essays that rarely strike an emotional chord.
From the Hardcover edition.
Anonymous
Posted March 4, 2012
David Sedaris? Please! This book could have been worse, but at best it was shallow and boring. It was the Olive Garden or Applebees of memoirs.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.AnthonyYounMD
Posted July 14, 2011
I loved this book. Wade Rouse is an amazing writer along the lines of David Sedaris. My highest recommendation!
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.KatieO84
Posted February 8, 2011
Could not stop laughing (except when I was crying!). The stories are quick, hilarious and touching. Finished this is one weekend - just couldnt stop reading. Wade, can I send you and Gary a crystal punch bowl?
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Some politicians believe gays and lesbians don't represent "family values," but we actually bring them to a higher level. Rather than just be content with the family we are born into, we feel the compulsion to customize committed relationships with one another (devoid of legal definition, in most states) that take herculean efforts and countless compromise to maintain. We may embrace our pets as surrogate "children," and have to work harder than our siblings to maintain good relationships with them and our parents who may not fully understand or accept what we are about.
It is just this craziness that Wade Rouse highlights in his latest memoir, a simultaneously hilarious and poignant remembrance of year-round holidays past and present. Navigating the stormy seas of dealing with individual quirks and compulsions, Wade tells about holiday trips to the homes of his Ozark parents and that of his partner, Gary's, yard sale-obsessed family, Halloween costumes he'll never forget (but would prefer to do so), and a passion for gardening that allowed Gary to bond with Wade's mom in a way he never could. There are amusing stories of parties planned, shopping at "Homo Depot" and why he learned to play the trombone. But there are also heartfelt stories of his relationship with his grandmother, his father's heart attack, and visit to his mother in a nursing facility.
It is extremely rare for me to go back and read parts of a book a second time, but I did immediately after finishing this one. I simply didn't want it to end! The individual stories - really 35 diverse vignettes set during different holiday times of the year - are so well-written, engaging and entertaining, that you too will want to savor each one like courses of a fulfilling feast. Anyone who had read any of Rouse's previous books knows his dry, un-PC humor, which is at its best yet in this, his fourth book. Don't miss this one! Five bold stars out of five!
- Bob Lind, Echo Magazine
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Overview
Wade Rouse attempts to answer that question in his blisteringly funny new memoir by looking at the yearly celebrations that unite us all and bring out the very best and worst in our nearest and dearest.
Family ...