If you’re a great storyteller, you can make the most mundane story compelling and engaging.
Reading She Got Up Off the Couch by Haven Kimmel is an example of great storytelling. And she’s from a small town in Indiana, so that endears her to me even more. I read her first book, A Girl Named Zippy and love it (I read it before I started reviewing books here so sorry I can’t link to the exciting review–just read it, it’s good.)
In She Got Up Off the Couch, Kimmel tells the story of her parents’ marriage and how her mom, once her kids were mostly grown, decided to literally get off the couch where she had been planted for years, go to college despite the challenges around her (her disapproving husband, being one), and change her life. Through Kimmel’s wonderful stories, you get to grow up in a small town, see what challenges so many women faced a generation before us, and, unfortunately, you also get to watch a marriage fall apart.
But through it all, you’re left encouraged and hopeful. And you’re left laughing because these stories are just funny and slightly unbelievable. She Got Up Off the Couch by Haven Kimmel is a book I really enjoyed and I’m telling my mom to read, I think she’d like it too.
Mary, I loved both of those books too. I read one of her fiction books, Something Rising, Light and Swift, which was also set in Indiana, and I did not love it. I was disappointed. I gave the book to someone- was it you? What did you think, if so?
I have not read that book and you did not give it to me but you should have.