Act Natural

Act Natural: A Cultural History of Misadventures in Parenting 

by Jennifer Traig

As one who enjoys the quirks of history, this book is right up my alley.  Told from a rather personable perspective, this book presents a well researched accounting of some of the most horrifying, hilarious, and outrageous parenting practices that have trended in the western world over the past thousand or so years. From baby cages that prevented the ‘demonic’ practice of crawling, to girdles for pregnant women so the baby wouldn’t grow to big, child rearing has seen some dark days and this book has them all!

Broken into topics, each chapter addresses a different parenting hot topic and how people have handled said issues at different times. Chapters on topics such as childbirth, advice columns, discipline, sibling rivalry, etc, walk you through historical attempts to address these issues to comedic effect. The things people have done to raise well adjusted humans are absolutely astounding.

Act Natural is not only an ode to parenting, it also provides a unique window into domestic life throughout the last thousand years. Interesting historical tidbits, cultural norms, and attitudes of the people who lived before us are well outlined in this book. 

While filled with sources, citations, and an impressive appendix, this thoroughly researched book is a joy to read and often laugh out loud funny. Traig’s almost glib tone while recounting some truly unhinged parenting practices allows the reader to gasp and laugh all while going on this educational journey through the history of parenting. 

Fans of Chuck Klosterman, Mary Roach, Caitlin Doughty, and Bill Bryson will appreciate the informative nature of this book as well as the tongue in cheek humour.

Burnt Toast Makes You Sing Good

 by Kathleen Flinn

I don’t usually read a lot of non-fiction, especially memoirs and biographies, but this one was recommended to me so I thought I would give it a try. Burnt Toast Makes You Sing Good is the story of the author’s childhood, family and the food they shared, the two often inextricably linked.  The book’s title is itself a memory of Flinn’s grandmother, who raised her own young family during the Depression.  Food wastage was not an option then so you had to eat that burnt toast which fortunately, according to Mom, made you sing good!

Kathleen Flinn grew up in the Midwestern US, and uses family members’ stories and her own memories to recount the life of the Flinns. From the pizza parlor her parents owned and operated, Grandpa Charles’ army recipe chili and Grandma Inez’s fluffy pancakes she ties family anecdotes to family history. 

Food was central to the household as new challenges and cross country adventures took place. Each stage of their lives was represented by the food in the fridge and the pantry. During the busy pizza parlor days, the restaurant menu which included large pizza pies made on metal garbage can lids fed everyone. Later on, life on the farm consisted of whatever they grew, hunted and canned. Finding 100’s of canning jars in the cellar, they set to work filling them with the farm’s bounty. In the later years, Flinn’s parents moved the family to the suburbs and a life of relative luxury away from the hard work of the farm. Being more financially secure, her parents began living a different life than that the kids had been used to, they threw parties, they went out, they stocked the shelves with store bought food! This in itself was an adjustment, having longed for these treats while on the farm, the kids now found themselves wishing for mom’s homemade fried chicken.

Throughout each move, the kids never once doubted that they were loved. Not always the best communicators, the family spoke through food. In the words of Grandma Inez “I don’t have to tell you I love you. I fed you pancakes.” 

Flinn’s tasty memories will pique your interest, and you can make most of them yourself from the recipes included amongst the chapters.

Don't I Know You?

Don't I Know You?

by Marni Jackson

There is a slightly surreal quality to Marni Jackson’s debut novel, Don’t I Know You? A novel broken into short stories, each one following Rose McEwan’s life from 16-60. These stories go through Rose’s  life chronologically, and each one contains a pop culture figure as a central character role  in the story. Whether it is wise words given by Joni Mitchell, a friendly kidnapping by Bill Murray, the best part of each story is Rose’s uncanny ability to describe the weird world she’s living in. 

Jackson is great at setting a scene and there is a languid flow to her words that really carries the reader on and through even some of the confusingly unbelievable celebrity encounters like Bob Dylan as an impromptu, guest-bedroom-crashing mooch. These stories, despite Rose’s recurrent proximity to fame and fortune, aren’t about the glamour and glitz of celebrity, but more of a sort of mundane celebrity fanfiction. And don’t let my use of “fanfiction” deter you either: these stories could exist without the celebrities and they would still be interesting, well-written vignettes. The use of celebrities allows the reader to bring their own characterization into the picture- a sort of shorthand to explore the story without worrying about having to build a character from scratch. Though certainly infused with detail from Jackson’s imagination, we all know a bit about Dylan without having to read much backstory or context. This also gives an intimacy to the storytelling- what would we do if Bob Dylan turned up at our cottage? 

There is a strong humour to Jackson’s choices of how the celebrities turn up in Rose’s life, an almost Wes Anderson-translated-to-the-page offbeatness.

I do think that this book is stronger in the first half than the second, as the stories do get a bit less believable as they go on. Another way to avoid this would be to read the book a few stories at a time, maybe even out of chronological order? Regardless, I enjoyed the writing and the premise is fun and original.

To Rise Again At a Decent Hour

by Joshua Ferris

Healthy teeth are much more important to one’s overall constitution than I ever gave them credit for. It all ties in, as I learned from reading Joshua Ferris’ To Rise Again at a Decent Hour- not a dentistry textbook but an offbeat novel about a dentist who becomes the victim of an elaborate stolen-identity mishap.

Paul O’Rourke is an anxious character and that feeling of anxiety, that on-the-edge-mental-game between suppression and collapse, permeates the novel from the first to last. Paul is coddled by his routines and hampered by his inability to hope for anything better- a sort of secret nihilist (“Of course I alienate myself from society. It's the only way I know of not being constantly reminded of all the ways I'm alienated from society”). The twist occurs when our hapless dentist discovers that someone has created a website on behalf of his dental practice-in the guise of O’Rourke himself. He has previously refused to create one, staying away from the internet and social media full stop, and his initial thought is that the website has been hoisted upon him by one of his three employees- which includes former girlfriend Connie. Then comes an unasked-for Twitter account, with someone tweeting about religion under Paul’s name, and emails on a mysterious religious group called the Ulms. Paul’s distress mounts as he attempts to uncover who is this other Paul O’Rourke and what is he doing.

There are moments in the novel when the history of the Ulms bog down the story, taking on such breadth and detail that it feels more like Ferris was having too much fun to rein it in. Nevertheless, the writing is so impressive that I genuinely mourned the end of the novel’s characters, world, and idea. There are quotable lines to be enjoyed, such as: “…the minute he takes up the floss, says to himself, What’s the point? In the end, the heart stops, the cells die, the neurons go dark, bacteria consumes the pancreas, flies lay their eggs, beetles chew through tendons and ligaments, the skin turns to cottage cheese, the bones dissolve, and the teeth float away with the tide”.

For a book that so often delves deep into the uncomfortable feeling of anxiety, this is nevertheless a hopeful and often hilarious novel.