The Mighty Queens of Freeville

Whelp, I have a confession. I actually didn't finish this book. First time that I have ever started reading a book and not finished it. And really, it had very little to do with the book itself. It was due back at the library and I couldn't renew it online like I normally would (something about my card not being active, despite the fact that I had used my library card a mere three weeks ago to check the books out. Whatever. I'll sort that out this summer), and I wasn't about to drive to the library to renew it so I could finish the last thirty pages and then drive back to return it. So, I just returned it unfinished.

Now, normally I would take major issue with the fact that I didn't finish a book, and not knowing the ending would bother me. I've stuck with some far less-interesting books than this one (like the one here), and I'm rarely totally disappointed by a book. But the structure of this book did make it feel like I had reached the end--even though there were still three or four chapters left.

Okay, before I totally lose you, let me explain. The Might Queens of Freeville is a memoir. But it's not told straight through from the beginning of the story to the end. It's told as a series of mini-stories that all overlap and connect to detail life of the author. This style did make it confusing at times--the beginning of the chapters did attempt to flow in a chronological order, but a few paragraphs in the author would switch to a "flashback" and tell a story from her youth, or her daughters youth, or her marriage, or whatever else was relevant. I'll admit that this style made following the progression of the book a little difficult (in one chapter she details the somewhat long and agonizing life and death of their cat, and in the next chapter she's moving across the country with her daughter and cat in tow), but the narrative style is what kept me engaged. As you would expect from someone who writes for a living (she is an advice columnist), she has the right balance of humor and reflection, and an uncanny ability to give advice without actually sounding like she is giving advice. So it was definitely enjoyable, and once I started treating every chapter as a new, "mini" story, I began to enjoy it even more. But do I ever plan to check this book out so I can re-read and finish it? Probably not. It's just another story of a divorcee/middle-life crisis/single mom/woman with family values. But it's the author's ability to take those seemingly "normal" events and weave them into a novel that makes this book marketable--any plain Jane could write a story about her life, but it takes a special kind of writer to be able to sell a story about her life (a skill that I'm truthfully envious of).