Mennonite in a Little Black Dress

Since I knew I would probably be reading quite a bit on our European adventure, I picked an extra book from my large collection just in case. I grabbed Mennonite in a Little Black Dress for no good reason other than it seemed like a singularly American book to read in Europe. I actually ended up reading this book simultaneously with The Bone Woman, partially because that book was depressing enough that I needed a light-hearted read to break it up a bit.

This book is a memoir by an English professor who was raised in the Mennonite community but left in her late teens. Her husband has left her and she's been in a bad car accident, so she returns to her family's home to convalesce. The book follows the time of her convalenscence with flashbacks to explain the family dynamics or the breakdown of her marriage.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It was a bit all over the place and I thought some points were over-emphasized, but it was hilarious. I started laughing out loud on our flight to Frankfurt. I think I scared the folks across the aisle. The author's family, especially her excruciatingly frank mother, are so sweet and silly that you can't help but get sucked in. The best parts were the conversations between the author and her mother or between all the women of the family, when bizarre statements would be made about things like the digestive properties of beets.

The book isn't strictly linear and it's easy to get a bit lost as the author jumps around between the present, the recent past and her Mennonite upbringing. But this isn't really a drawback, it just means that, as a reader, you cannot expect a perfect story arc. The book does sometimes seem like a flow of consciousness, and it's not organized in any particular way. But who cares? It's hysterical.

The one thing that bugged me, maybe more than it should, is the description of the break-up of the author's marriage. A big deal is made of the fact that her husband left her for a man he met on gay.com. This seems to make the break-up of the marriage seem more tragic, since it suggests that her husband was hiding his homosexuality from her until he left. But, about two thirds of the way through the book, the author casually mentions that she knew her husband was bisexual and that he had dated men before they met. This doesn't functionally change anything, but it made the initial emphasis on the gay.com thing seem a bit dishonest. Really, you find out through the course of the book that their marriage was rocky and difficult from the start and the author is very frank about their struggles.

I definitely feel I understand at least this small part of the Mennonite community better after reading this book, though I don't know that I could describe their religious beliefs. The author is much more concerned with describing the social and familial aspects of this culture than delving into the formation of the sect or its current teachings. I do know that traditional Mennonite cooking is a bit... interesting. That chapter was one of my favorites.

Overall I give this book a 9 out of 10 for pure enjoyment. If I wanted to give a rating based on strict literary merit, it would probably be lower, but I just had such a good time reading this book that I have to give credit. This will probably become one of those books that I pull out when I'm having a bad day, just to cheer me up.