This book shows that not all recommendations from friends have a happy ending. Meaning, I didn't like this book very much. Even though it is supposed to be a memoir of a girl from Indiana, it read more like a chick lit. The writing is not very challenging, I found it quite boring at times. One of the few books where I was quite glad it wasn't that long because I don't think it would have improved if there had been more pages. I wondered whether I didn't find it funny because I am not American and don't get the jokes or don't have the same sense of humour but I don't think that's it because there are other American authors whose humour I thoroughly enjoy, Bill Bryson for instance. And I even grew up in a similar rural environment as the author.
In short, this book is not for me.
From the back cover:
"When Haven Kimmel was born in 1965, Mooreland, Indiana, was a sleepy little hamlet of three hundred people. Nicknamed "Zippy" for the way she would bolt around the house, this small girl was possessed of big eyes and even bigger ears. In this witty and lovingly told memoir, Kimmel takes readers back to a time when small-town America was caught in the amber of the innocent postwar period–people helped their neighbors, went to church on Sunday, and kept barnyard animals in their backyards.
Laced with fine storytelling, sharp wit, dead-on observations, and moments of sheer joy, Haven Kimmel's straight-shooting portrait of her childhood gives us a heroine who is wonderfully sweet and sly as she navigates the quirky adult world that surrounds Zippy."
