Book Review: Black Heels to Tractor Wheels by Ree Drummond

This is an absolutely precious book, and it is only made all the more spine-tinglingly wonderful by the fact that it is a memoir and not fiction. It is the stuff of fairy tales (albeit with a decent hunk of trauma and misfortune the likes of which not often featured by Disney); in many ways it is the perfect love story. The fact that the author and her husband are still very much together and in love many years, four children and surely several more traumas later makes the whole thing even better. If there’s one way to describe this book it’s as a great big dab of hope for all the romantically cynical.

At several points Drummond sarcastically jokes that it must have been her eloquence (p. 21 “You know, stuff, and Me, too, all in the same conversation. This guy was sure to be floored by my eloquence.”) that had her Wrangler clad cowboy so smitten and, it has to be said, her writing style does seem to lack a certain eloquence in places. It is written very much in the kind of colloquial conversational style that Drummond blogs in, and though it works very well in the short intimate posts of a blog there are times when it is somewhat less endearing in a full length memoir.  On the other hand, this style does rather mirror her own adorable tongue twistedness in the early stages of her Western romance and as the relationship becomes more established and settles down a little, so too does the writing style.

It certainly doesn’t stop her from making the characters feel ever so real and loveable, to the extent that the reader feels totally invested in the course of their lives. From the get-go we find ourselves rooting for the oh-so-gentlemanly Malboro man versus the distant Californian surfer J and we cringe wholeheartedly along with Ree as she falls over her own feet on her first date. Not to mention the sympathy we feel when she attempts to pick out suitable attire from her L.A. wardrobe for an early morning ranch work party at which she will meet her beau’s parents for the first time. The horror that grips us when she promptly manages to drive her car- containing both herself and her future mother-in-law- into a ditch is all consuming. And please let’s not mention the sweating in the guest bathroom incident….. I’m still recovering from the embarrassment so goodness only knows how Drummond herself found the strength to continue with life without changing her identity and moving to the North Pole!

The whole book is wonderfully charming, from the sweetly family-friendly way she dances around describing the more intimate aspects of her relationship to the way she manages to make making-out in the back of a pickup sound ever so classy and sophisticated! The fact that her crazy, instinctive decision to cancel her planned move to Chicago solely due to a weeks old relationship with a cowboy (normally the kind of decision that, however right, really only makes sense to the person in question) clearly demonstrates the impressive way that Drummond builds up a relationship between herself and the reader.

This might not be the most highbrow read (nor, indeed, is it meant to be) but it is a fun, sweet, loving and most satisfying story. It is the perfect book to read in a quiet, sleepy house before anyone but the dog has woken up…. whilst eating leftover chocolate mousse birthday cake for breakfast. I can personally attest to this. 

Book Review: The Foremost Good Fortune by Susan Conley

The whole way through this book I really wasn’t sure whether it was a novel or a memoir (I downloaded it onto my kindle and clearly just skipped past the cover page without a second glance since I now see that it obviously states it is the latter). What’s more, I really didn’t care either way!

The author does such a good job of making daily life for her family (transported from Maine to Beijing for two years) seem real to the reader that after a while I just stopped wondering whether it was imaginary or factual. It simply did not matter since either way I was vicariously living Beijing life along with the main character Susan (who, yes, also happens to be the author of the book). From her attempts to persuade her kids to take the terrifying school bus, to the bemusing experience of attempting to buy apples, to the bewilderment concerning what, exactly, a sweater party is, the frustrations of trying to get real world news on the Chinese internet and TV and to her wholly endearing terror when she thinks she’s about to get busted for buying pirated, non-government approved DVDs we experience everything along with Susan in HD and full living color! We feel what she feels, see what she sees, laugh, cry, exult and puzzle alongside her.

Even when cancer strikes, the author somehow manages to make the experience of this disease entirely real to the reader. We can still empathise with her. We still live life along with her.

Novel or memoir, it is regardless a remarkable feat of writing ability to create such reality. To bring along your readers in such a convincing way, to suck them into the goings on of your daily life in a way that doesn’t feel fake or contrived. To make them fully experience everything, rather than just passively observe. This is what I really look for in a good book. When I say that a book seems real, I mean that during the course of reading it, it has become real to me. 

Book Review: The Covenant by Naomi Ragen

The Covenant is at once deep, rich, dark, traumatising and hopeful. It brings the reader to tears of distress and then to tears of joy. It is emotive and powerful and it is really an extraordinary little book. This is the type of book that makes you think. The type of book throughout which you feel your views, opinions and beliefs evolving and adapting.

I first came across it when it popped up on that oh-so-dangerous ‘More Items to Consider’ list on Amazon. I was intrigued and so I went about trying to find it in several bookstores. Unfortunately it seems that Ragen’s books are not widely sold in the UK, nor are they available on kindle so eventually I caved and bought a second hand copy from Amazon. I started reading it the evening the package arrived and basically didn’t put it down again until I was finished.

I am quite sure that in some circles this book could prove to be rather controversial but it really needn’t be. Yes, the author is an Israeli woman. Yes, it contains clear views on the legitimacy of Israel and the entire notion of a Jewish state (both of which I fully support though this is neither here nor there) but this is really not the central purpose of the book. This is not necessarily a story about an Israeli mother but about the horror of terrorism and the evils that we are all capable of. It is also about the will to live and the beauty of life. Its central message is really that life is a gift that we should all, regardless of creed or color, grasp with both hands, cling to and fight for.

The main character Elise is a Jewish mother but she could be a Catholic mother or a Muslim mother or a Hindu mother……

One of the crucial aspects of the book is that no character emerges from the calamitous events without suffering immeasurable grief. Not Elise, not her grandmother, not her grandmothers’ friends and family, not the terrorists, not the IDF, not the uncomfortably over ambitious journalist (it is a testament to Ragen’s abilities that it is impossible not to like this character a little bit, even though you so want to hate her). Even the brave woman who ends up rescuing Elise’s daughter, Ilana, does not get away free and happy. The message is quite clear—this is what apathy towards the gift of human life brings. I think the whole story is most succinctly summed up in the following quote:

“The two women, their souls seared and dissolved by shock waves of grief and loss, rocked together in a desperate embrace. The Arab woman’s ululation of mourning mingled with the Jewish woman’s heartrending cries of grief.

Arab and Jew, the tears were the same tears. The broken heart, the grief, the mourning, both the same….”

Excerpt from: Naomi Ragen (2004) The Covenant (NY, NY: St Martin’s Press) p. 271