Mennonite in a Little Black Dress by Rhoda Janzen
Media Reviews
BookBrowse Review
"Glib humor runs from start to finish through this memoir serving to further undermine a story structure already confusing and jumbled, leaving us to wonder - and your point is?" - BJ Hegedus
Other Reviews
"Starred Review. Women will immediately warm to the self-deprecating honesty with which she describes the efforts of friends and family to help her re-establish her emotional well-being." - Publishers Weekly
"This soulful, affecting first memoir...will enchant anyone who has ever gone back home after suffering a setback." - Library Journal
"This book is not just beautiful and intelligent, but also painfully - even wincingly - funny. It is rare that I literally laugh out loud while I'm reading, but Rhoda Janzen's voice - singular, deadpan, sharp-witted and honest - slayed me, with audible results. I have a list already of about fourteen friends who need to read this book. I will insist that they read it. Because simply put, this the most delightful memoir I've read in ages." - Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love
"Dad's many charms include a maddening passivity and a penchant for public prayer at Denny's. But it was mom's lark-in-springtime personality that had me in hysterics. Peppered with Menno recipes, Janzen's memoir is a tasty treat." - Linda Bubon, Publishers Weekly Galley Talk
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Cloggie Downunder
very funny
Mennonite in a Little Black Dress is a memoir by Rhoda Janzen. Daughter of the head of the Mennonite church in North America (the Mennonite equivalent of the Pope), Janzen rejected her family's faith at eighteen to go to college and teach. At forty-four, after a turbulent marriage that ended with her husband leaving her for a man he met on Gay.com, and having survived a serious car accident, Rhoda goes home to her parents' welcoming arms and quirky lifestyle. She finds her return therapeutic and soothing. Janzen manages to fill this memoir with hilarious anecdotes whilst painting her family as loving and supportive. It is gratifying to learn that the phenomenon of Catholic guilt is not the exclusive domain of victims of the Roman Catholic Church. Very funny.
SAM
This LBD Isn't Your Basic, Ubiquitous LBD
The humor seems effortless, but that's just not possible - it's too universal. The voice with which Rhoda Janzen writes could belong to anyone, not only a Mennonite. I kept 'hearing' Jews, Italians, southerners, and any number of other groups who have intact cultural identities. It was, at times, uncanny, and it was charming.
This book has been described as a 'coming of age tale,' but that isn't really the way I saw it. Coming of age more typically refers to a first step that encompasses some brilliant and newly revealed truth. This book was something more than that - it was more like 'coming to terms with coming of age.'
The humor was dead on - just self-deprecating enough and with wry, witty observations about the supporting characters as well as the author. And, the characters were just about perfect, too. At some point most of us realize, and come to appreciate, the relative wisdom of our parents, and the author brings this out brilliantly. She moves her mother from a role in her father's shadow to a quiet, but central and wise figure in the family. Her father morphs from an authoritarian figure to a completely human one. The same growth can be seem in the other characters that live in this book. Even the repeated references to the ex-husband and Gay.com are spot on.
Read it to enjoy something and just take it easy for a minute.
Mennonite in a Little Black Dress by Rhoda Janzen
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