So You've Been Publicly Shamed
Jon Ronson, 2015
Penguin Books
304 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781594634017
Summary
"It's about the terror, isn't it?"
"The terror of what?" I said.
"The terror of being found out."
For the past three years, Jon Ronson has travelled the world meeting recipients of high-profile public shamings. The shamed are people like us—people who, say, made a joke on social media that came out badly, or made a mistake at work.
Once their transgression is revealed, collective outrage circles with the force of a hurricane and the next thing they know they're being torn apart by an angry mob, jeered at, demonized, sometimes even fired from their job.
A great renaissance of public shaming is sweeping our land. Justice has been democratized. The silent majority are getting a voice. But what are we doing with our voice? We are mercilessly finding people's faults. We are defining the boundaries of normality by ruining the lives of those outside it. We are using shame as a form of social control.
Simultaneously powerful and hilarious in the way only Jon Ronson can be, So You've Been Publicly Shamed is a deeply honest book about modern life, full of eye-opening truths about the escalating war on human flaws—and the very scary part we all play in it. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—May 10, 1967
• Where—Cardiff, Wales, UK
• Education—University of Westminster (London)
• Currently—lives in London, England, and New York City, New York
Jon Ronson is a Welsh journalist, author, documentary filmmaker, and radio presenter, whose works include the best-selling The Men Who Stare at Goats (2004), The Psychopath Test (2011), and So You've Been Publicly Shamed (2015).
He has been described as a "gonzo journalist" (a first-person style of journalism in which the reporter is part of the story) and is known for his informal, but skeptical, investigations of controversial fringe politics and science.
As the author of nine books, Jonson's work has appeared in British publications such as The Guardian, City Life and Time Out. He has made several BBC Television documentary films and two documentary series for Channel 4. He is also a regular contributor to public radio's This American Life.
Personal life
Ronson was born in Cardiff, Wales, and studied for a degree in Media Studies at the University of Westminster. Ronson is a distinguished supporter of the British Humanist Association. He is married to Elaine Patterson, and the couple has a son, Joel.
Writing career
Ronson's first book, Clubbed Class, was published in 1994. The book is a travelogue in which Ronson bluffs his way into a jet set lifestyle, in search of the world's finest holiday.[8]
His second book, Them: Adventures with Extremists, was published in 2001 and chronicles his experiences with people labelled as extremists. Subjects in the book include David Icke, Randy Weaver, Omar Bakri Muhammad, Ian Paisley, Alex Jones, and Thom Robb. Ronson also follows independent investigators of secretive groups such as the Bilderberg Group. The narrative tells of Ronson's attempts to infiltrate the "shadowy cabal" fabled, by these conspiracy theorists, to rule the world. The book, a bestseller, was described by Louis Theroux as "funny and compulsively readable picaresque adventure through a paranoid shadow world."
Ronson's 2004 book, The Men Who Stare at Goats, deals with the secret New Age unit within the United States Army called the First Earth Battalion. Ronson investigated people who believed that, with the right mental preparation, people can walk through walls and goats can be killed simply by staring at them. A film adaptation was released in 2009, in which Ronson's investigations were fictionalised and structured around a journey to Iraq. Ronson is played by the actor Ewan McGregor in the film.
Ronson's fourth book, Out of the Ordinary: True Tales of Everyday Craziness, was published in 2006. It is a collection of Ronson's Guardian articles, mostly those concerning his domestic life. A companion volume, What I Do: More True Tales of Everyday Craziness, was published in 2007.
The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry is Ronson's fifth book, published in 2011. In it, he explores the nature of psychopathic behaviour, investigating the reliability of the Hare Psychopathy Checklist and learning how to apply it. He interviews people in facilities for the criminally insane as well as potential psychopaths in corporate boardrooms. The book has been criticized by Robert D. Hare, creator of the Hare Psychopathy Checklist, who called it "frivolous, shallow, and professionally disconcerting."
Lost at Sea: The Jon Ronson Mysteries is Ronson's sixth book, published in 2012. So You've Been Publicly Shamed, a book about public shaming, came out in 2015. It considers social media's role in escalating high-profile public scandals. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 4/15/2015.)
Book Reviews
The choice of subject for So You've Been Publicly Shamed turns out to be gutsy and smart. Without losing any of the clever agility that makes his books so winning, [Ronson] has taken on truly consequential material and risen to the challenge. His overall point is something we already understand: Public shaming in the age of social media has the kind of power that no form of shaming ever had before.
Janet Maslin - New York Times
An irresistibly gossipy cocktail with a chaser of guilt.
Newsday
A diligent investigator and a wry, funny writer, Ronson manages to be at once academic and entertaining.
Boston Globe
A work of original, inspired journalism.
Financial Times
A sharp-eyed and often hilarious book…Jon Ronson has written a fresh, big-hearted take on an important and timely topic. He has nothing to be ashamed of.
NPR.org
This book really needed to be written.
Salon.com
It’s sharply observed, amusingly told, and, while its conclusions may stop just short of profound, the true pleasure of the book lies in arriving at those conclusions.”
Onion, AV Club
[A] simultaneously lightweight and necessary book.
Esquire
Ronson is an entertaining and provocative writer, with a broad reach …[So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed] is a well-reported, entertainingly written account of an important subject.
Oregonian
I was mesmerized. And I was also disturbed.
Forbes
[H]igh-profile shaming in the social-media age in this witty work.... Ronson is self-reflective and honest about his own complicity in the cultural piling-on.... Clever and thought-provoking, this book has the potential to open an important dialogue about faux moral posturing online and its potentially disastrous consequences.
Publishers Weekly
In 2012, Ronson's online identity was stolen by three academics.... [H]e chastised them publicly, but...began considering how much public shaming as social control is still with us, even if those scarlet letters have been pitched in the wastebasket.
Library Journal
With confidence, verve, and empathy, Ronson skillfully informs and engages the reader without excusing those caught up in the shame game. As he stresses, we are the ones wielding this incredible power over others' lives, often with no regard for the lasting consequences of our actions.
Booklist
[A] hard look at the dark side of shaming on social media.... Ronson believes that via social media, we are creating a contemporary version of...awarding scarlet letters with gleeful viciousness to people who often are more guilty of silliness and indiscretion than they are of any...felony.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also, consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for So You've Been Publicly Shamed:
1. One of the overriding questions posed by Ronson's book is whether or not anyone of us might become the butt of a public shaming scandal. Are any of us immune? Are you?
2. Can you come up with your own examples of someone who received a highly public shaming through social media? Did that individual deserve the attention and attendant disgrace?
3. How easy is it for someone to put his or her life back together after being publicly shamed?
4. To what degree does someone, who is object of social media frenzy, deserve the disapprobation he or she receives?
5. What role does—and ideally should—blame and shame play in maintaining society's moral standards? How do we hold people accountable for their transgressions—and what kind of transgressions deserve public shaming?
6. Which, if any, of Ronson's subjects do you have sympathy for? Was there anyone you felt who deserved the high-profile blame?
7. Is there anything positive, any societal good, that results from social media's blame-and shame potential?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution.)
Magnificent Obesity: My Search for Wellness, Voice and Meaning in the Second Half of Life
Martha M. Moravec, 2014
Hatherleigh Press / Random House
239 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781578265053
Summary
Lose weight, calm down, find God.
Priorities fall quickly into place for a 55-year-old compulsive overeater with a panic disorder when a mild heart attack accelerates her midlife crisis into a furious race to close the gap between where she appears to be going in life and the very different place she wants to be.
Hindered by numerous, longstanding obstacles to wellness and wholeness—from an obsessive fear of death to a two-pack-a-day smoking habit—writer Martha Moravec turns crisis into opportunity, loss into insight and the pain of her past into a means for growing up in time to grow old with grace.
A diabetic weighing in at 324 pounds, Martha pulls together a support team of doctors, therapists and priests, helpers, healers and friends from the grid of small town life in southern Vermont. The patience and dedication of the people she calls "the angels we can see" prove that it takes a village to make a self-actualized adult as she addresses childhood developmental trauma, panic attacks and phobias, addictive behaviors and debilitating symptoms in an often painful but always illuminating fight toward recovery, reinvention and rebirth.
Magnificent Obesity depicts one woman’s effort to look honestly and compassionately at her obesity through a kaleidoscopic lens of anxiety disorder, addictive behavior, agnosticism and the onset of aging. Her conviction that it’s never too late to grow up, that it is possible to feel born again at any age and that there is no expiration date on dreams will inspire anyone who yearns to rewrite their story and take their own magnificent leap into a life lived with passion, purpose and authentic power. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—June 11 1952
• Raised—New York City, New York, USA
• Education—B.A., Smith College
• Currently—lives in Brattleboro, Vermont
Martha is also the author of two novels: an epic historical fantasy, The Secret Name of God; and a sci-fi fantasy for young adults, The Odd Body Vanity Squad. Before committing to prose, she wrote the book and lyrics for five original full-length musicals, all of which were successfully produced in southern Vermont and Boston.
She blogs at "Mad Genius Bohemians" about the mysteries of the creative life and the legacy of family. She also blogs at "Growing Up in Time to Grow Old with Grace" about the hazards posed by anxiety, addiction, aging and agnosticism to personal growth and transformation. She can usually be found at home in Vermont working on her next seven novels, four novellas, second memoir and a revision of the five musicals. (From the publisher.)
Visit the author's webpage.
Follow Martha on Facebook.
Discussion Questions
1. What was your first impression of the title Magnificent Obesity? What sort of book did it suggest to you? Did you find the use of the word obesity uncomfortable or off-putting? What is your impression of the title now? (Return to this question when done.)
2. Anxiety has been described as an existential fear of self, of who we are and how we feel as human beings. Have you experienced anxiety as this fear of self?
3. Discuss and share your own anxiety attacks, panic attacks and phobias. Did you ever wonder if they were trying to protect you and if so, from what? How much of your anxiety would you attribute to nature and how much to nurBture? What methods do you find most effective in managing your stress?
4. Much has been made of the distinction between being religious and being spiritual. What does the distinction mean to you?
5. How do your spiritual beliefs shape your life, from living day-to-day to experiencing overall purpose and meaning?
6. What does Martha mean when she says she is fighting for her soul?
7. How does Martha’s fear of abandonment contribute to her addictions?
8. If you feel comfortable doing so, discuss your own addictions, past and present. How have they affected your ability to achieve your goals or to be the person you want to be?
9. Discuss our culture’s war on obesity, its unrealistic ideals of beauty and its interference with the development of one’s body image. Discuss how one’s body image effects self-esteem, behaviors and performance in life.
10. What does Alec mean when he tells Martha, "The food is your way of keeping God out?"
11. Do you agree with Martha that the only way to truly heal and become whole is to grieve, to fully experience the pain of one’s past and that the best way out is through?
12. How has Martha’s obsessive fear of death shaped her life?
13.The book’s key relationship is that between Martha and her mother. How does it resemble your relationship with your mother/parent; how does it differ? How do these relationships change over time?
14. Do you consider the baptism a fitting way for Martha to celebrate her sixtieth birthday?
(Questions courtesy of the author.)
Little Demon in the City of Light: A True Story of Murder in Belle Epoque Paris
Steven Levingston, 2014
Knopf Doubleday
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780307950307
Summary
In 1889, the gruesome murder of a lascivious court official at the hands of a ruthless con man and his pliant mistress launched the trial of the century.
When Toussaint-Augustin Gouffe entered 3, rue Tronson du Coudray, expecting a delightful assignation with the comely Gabrielle Bompard, he was instead murdered by Gabrielle and her lover, Michel Eyraud.
An international manhunt chased the infamous couple from Paris to America’s West Coast, culminating in a sensational trial that investigated the power of hypnosis to possess, control, and even kill.
As the inquiry into the guilt or innocence of the woman the French tabloids dubbed the "Little Demon" intensified, the most respected minds in France vehemently debated: Was Gabrielle Bompard the pawn of her mesmerizing lover or simply a coldly calculating murderess capable of killing a man in cold blood? (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1956
• Rasied—California, USA
• Education—B.A., University of California-Berkeley; M.A., Stanford University
• Currently—lives in Bethesda, Maryland
Steven Levingston is the nonfiction editor of the Washington Post. He also writes books and plays and does some book reviewing. Most recently, he is author of Little Demon in the City of Light: A True Story of Murder and Mesmerism in Belle Époque Paris (2014) and The Kennedy Baby: The Loss that Transformed JFK (2013).
Before taking on the greatest job in the world as nonfiction editor, he worked for the Wall Street Journal, International Herald Tribune, Associated Press and China Daily, with stints in Beijing, Hong Kong and Paris. He grew up in California and graduated from the University of California at Berkeley and Stanford University. He now lives in Bethesda, Maryland with his wife and two children. (Adapted from the publisher and from the author's website.)
Book Reviews
Levingston has unearthed a whopper of a story, and lovingly crafted a dense, lyrical yarn that hits the true-crime trifecta of setting, story and so-what. Such books remind us that times may change, but the human animal does not.
New York Times
Levingston, who is nonfiction book editor of the Washington Post and knows a good story when he sees one, has given it a richly enjoyable telling. Its lurid and improbable plot twists are expertly transposed into a breathless true-crime thriller set against a sumptuous evocation of the boulevards, nightclubs and boudoirs of Belle Epoque Paris."
Wall Street Journal
An engaging—and finally chilling—portrait of an uneasy era and a city of more shadow than light.
Washington Post
Fascinating.... A rich portrait of the period, as well as the intriguing story of a notorious murder case, with its strange (and often amusing) cast of characters.
Boston Globe
Equal parts period piece, forensic manual, and legal thriller, the book is a strong entry in the 'fascinating case in a fascinating time' genre.
Daily Beast
A terrific story well told.
Seattle Times
Readers are well-served by his reimagining of this amazing true story.
Minneapolis Star-Tribune
[T]he book is lovingly constructed from available sources, including newspapers, memoirs, and secondary histories, and immerses the reader in a period whose newfound obsessions—science and pseudo-science of the mind, criminal forensics, mass media, the macabre, and fame—have a seminal connection to our own time.
Publishers Weekly
[A] fascinating and easy-to-read true crime story about a sensational murder connected with hypnotism in late 19th-century Paris. [Levingston] weaves historical details of the grisly murder of a court official by a con man and his mistress...with background information about the rise of hypnotism in the scientific world.... Levingston's writing is entertaining yet informative, and clearly produced from years of research. —Amelia Osterud, Carroll Univ. Lib., Waukesha, WI
Library Journal
Levingston's smartly chipper prose and fine attention to detail...add an entertaining and authentic sensibility to this re-creation of a culture, a crime, and "the first time an accused murderer had put forward a hypnotism defense. —Eloise Kinney
Booklist
[Steven] Levingston uses the story of a murder by a foolish girl and her lover to illustrate another side of belle epoque Paris. The author foregoes the tabloid excesses and exploitation of lurid details from that time and focuses on the debate as to whether a person is capable of committing a crime under hypnosis or even post-hypnotic suggestion.... [A] well-constructed, informative work by a talented author.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Paris in the Belle Epoque was a strange and sensational place. What were some of the signs of its bizarre city life? Would you have liked to be alive then?
2. Do you think hypnotism has the powers that the French in the 19th century believed it had, even to the point that someone could be hypnotized to commit murder?
3. Women in the Belle Epoque were sometimes perceived as "hysterics." How did doctors and scientists treat women like that? And was it right?
4. The Paris newspapers played up the Gabrielle Bompard murder case. Consider the hunger of the press for the latest morsels about the little demon and her behavior. Were you surprised by the extent of the media hype more than a century ago? Discuss how this hype foreshadows the intense coverage of cases like the story of OJ Simpson.
5. Chief detective Goron was a classic, indefatigable gumshoe. What did you think of his style of police work?
6. Programs like CSI feature cutting edge forensics. But in the Belle Epoque, Dr. Alexandre Lacassagne was a pioneer in forensic science and his revolutionary techniques helped solve the case. How did early forensics figure in the story?
7. Putting the bloody trunk on display at the morgue for thousands of Parisians to see was just as much a spectacle as a night at the Moulin Rouge. Sigmund Freud, who was a medical student in Paris in 1885, wrote home: "Suffice it to say that the city and its inhabitants strike me as uncanny; the people seem to me of a different species from ourselves; I feel they are all possessed of a thousand demons." What did you think of the public’s eagerness to embrace the ghoulish?
8. Inspector Jaume felt that Gabrielle had become too popular and was disgusted by the public’s excitement over a murder suspect. "There is truly hypnotism in the air," he said. "Only it’s Gabrielle who magnetizes public opinion." Did you believe Gabrielle’s testimony?
9. What do you think of the sentencing of Gabrielle Bompard and Michel Eyraud. Fair or not?
10. Did this book change or inform your perception of Paris in the Belle Epoque?
(Questions courtesy of the author.)
He Wanted the Moon: The Madness and Medical Genius of Dr. Perry Baird, and His Daughter's Quest to Know Him
Mimi Baird, 2015
Crown Publishing
272 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780804137478
Summary
A mid-century doctor's raw, unvarnished account of his own descent into madness, and his daughter's attempt to piece his life back together and make sense of her own.
Texas-born and Harvard-educated, Dr. Perry Baird was a rising medical star in the late 1920s and 1930s. Early in his career, ahead of his time, he grew fascinated with identifying the biochemical root of manic depression, just as he began to suffer from it himself.
By the time the results of his groundbreaking experiments were published, Dr. Baird had been institutionalized multiple times, his medical license revoked, and his wife and daughters estranged. He later received a lobotomy and died from a consequent seizure, his research incomplete, his achievements unrecognized.
Mimi Baird grew up never fully knowing this story, as her family went silent about the father who had been absent for most of her childhood. Decades later, a string of extraordinary coincidences led to the recovery of a manuscript which Dr. Baird had worked on throughout his brutal institutionalization, confinement, and escape.
This remarkable document, reflecting periods of both manic exhilaration and clear-headed health, presents a startling portrait of a man who was a uniquely astute observer of his own condition, struggling with a disease for which there was no cure, racing against time to unlock the key to treatment before his illness became impossible to manage.
Fifty years after being told her father would forever be "ill" and "away," Mimi Baird set off on a quest to piece together the memoir and the man. In time her fingers became stained with the lead of the pencil he had used to write his manuscript, as she devoted herself to understanding who he was, why he disappeared, and what legacy she had inherited.
The result of his extraordinary record and her journey to bring his name to light is He Wanted the Moon, an unforgettable testament to the reaches of the mind and the redeeming power of a determined heart. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1938
• Where—Boston, Massachusetts, USA
• Education—B.A., Colby Sawyer College
• Currently—lives in Woodstock, Vermont
Mimi Baird, a Bostonian, is a graduate of Colby Sawyer College. After working at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, she later moved to Woodstock, Vermont, where she worked as an office manager at the Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center. There she met a surgeon who had once known her father, a meeting that prompted her quest to finally understand her father’s life and legacy. Mimi has two children and four grandchildren. This is her first book. (From .)
Book Reviews
An extraordinary Möbius strip of a book.... Autobiography, biography, science, history and literature all in one, as instructive as any textbook and utterly impossible to put down...The text of Dr. Baird’s manuscript is haunting. The tone is one a suspense writer might struggle to sustain: The most unreliable of narrators, Dr. Baird is objective, charming, humorous, then suddenly just a little off, and then flat-out gone, leaving an irrational stranger in his place. The reader can almost watch the circuits in his brain surge and dim just as, Ms. Baird reports, the handwriting in the manuscript morphed from disciplined to disorderly and back again.
Abigail Zuger, M.D - New York Times
Extraordinary...a remarkably eloquent account of mental illness, reminiscent of Kay Redfield Jamison’s An Unquiet Mind and Susanna Kaysen’s Girl, Interrupted. Perry Baird emerges as thoughtful and at times eerily aware of his condition as well as his inability to elude either its symptoms or the primitive treatments for them…. The elder Baird’s narrative is cinematic, featuring Ratched-like nurses and an escape scene straight out of The Fugitive.... [Dr. Baird] never really knew his daughter—or her achievement in telling this story.
Nora Krug - Washington Post
Baird’s lonely, angry, grief-stricken, and occasionally grandiose account of his illness and its shattering costs is the reason we can’t put [this book] down. His sharply detailed recollections are sometimes sane and sometimes not, but his writing is lucid even when his thinking isn’t. His manuscript is a plea to understand his experience and, by extension, others.
Laura Collins-Hughes - Boston Globe
Perry Baird was a pioneer in attempting to understand the workings of manic depression…In bringing her father’s harrowing, tragic, and moving story to life, Mimi Baird celebrates him and gives voice to the terrible suffering the mentally ill once endured, and still do today, and challenges the prejudices and misperceptions the public continues to have about the disease.
Publishers Weekly
Through this moving memoir, Baird slowly brings her father back to life and reveals the sordid history of treating mental illness.
Bookpage
Astonishing in its illuminations....This striking and poignant family story evokes compassion for everyone affected by this cruel malady."
Booklist
Moving...[Baird] sketches the life of a man who had done brilliantly in college and medical school—even co-authoring a paper with the eminent physiologist Walter Cannon—but who would be felled by psychosis...A sobering account of how little we knew and how much we still have to learn about mental illness—especially how not to treat it.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
(We'll add specific questions if and when they're made available by the publisher.)
Bettyville: A Memoir
George Hodgman, 2015
Penguin Books
288 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780525427209
Summary
A witty, tender memoir of a son’s journey home to care for his irascible mother—a tale of secrets, silences, and enduring love.
When George Hodgman leaves Manhattan for his hometown of Paris, Missouri, he finds himself—an unlikely caretaker and near-lethal cook—in a head-on collision with his aging mother, Betty, a woman of wit and will. Will George lure her into assisted living?
When hell freezes over. He can’t bring himself to force her from the home both treasure—the place where his father’s voice lingers, the scene of shared jokes, skirmishes, and, behind the dusty antiques, a rarely acknowledged conflict: Betty, who speaks her mind but cannot quite reveal her heart, has never really accepted the fact that her son is gay.
As these two unforgettable characters try to bring their different worlds together, Hodgman reveals the challenges of Betty’s life and his own struggle for self-respect, moving readers from their small town—crumbling but still colorful—to the star-studded corridors of Vanity Fair. Evocative of The End of Your Life Book Club and The Tender Bar, Hodgman’s debut is both an indelible portrait of a family and an exquisitely told tale of a prodigal son’s return. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1959-60
• Where—Paris, Missouri, USA
• Education—B.A., Missouri School of Journalism; M.A., Boston College
• Currently—lives in New York City and Paris, Missouri
George Hodgman is a veteran magazine and book editor who has worked at Simon & Schuster, Vanity Fair, and Talk magazine. His writing has appeared in Entertainment Weekly, Interview, W, and Harper’s Bazaar, among other publications. He lives in New York City and Paris, Missouri. (From .)
Book Reviews
A remarkable, laugh-out-loud book.... Rarely has the subject of elder care produced such droll human comedy, or a heroine quite on the mettlesome order of Betty Baker Hodgman. For as much as the book works on several levels (as a meditation on belonging, as a story of growing up gay and the psychic cost of silence, as metaphor for recovery), it is the strong-willed Betty who shines through.
New York Times
An intimate, heartfelt portrait of a mother and son, each at the crossroads of life.... Hodgman’s sharp wit carries the book ever forward.
Minneapolis Star-Tribune
A superb memoir.... Hodgman is by turns wry, laugh-out-loud funny, self-deprecating, insecure to the point of near suicide, and an attentive caregiver despite occasional, understandable resentments.... I have read several hundred American memoirs; I would place Bettyville in the top five.
Steve Weinberg - Kansas City Star
In his tender, sardonic, and fearless account of life with Betty—who has never acknowledged that her son is gay—Hodgman delivers an epic unfolding of his lifelong search for acceptance and love.
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
A humorous, bittersweet account of Hodgman’s caring for his aging, irascible mother.
Vanity Fair
The author's continuous low-key humor infuses the memoir with refreshing levity, without diminishing the emotional toll of being the sole health-care provider to an elderly parent. This is an emotionally honest portrayal of a son's secrets and his unending devotion to his mother.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) This is a superior memoir, written in a witty and episodic style, yet at times it’s heartbreaking...filled with a lifetime’s worth of reflection and story after fascinating story.
Library Journal
The book is instantly engaging, as Hodgman has a wry sense of humor, one he uses to keep others at a distance. Yet the book is also devastatingly touching. Betty is one tough cookie, and...[t]here’s a lot for Hodgman to handle.... A tender, resolute look at a place, literal and figurative, baby boomers might find themselves.
Booklist
Hodgman writes with wit and empathy about all the loss he’s confronted with.... That doesn’t mean Bettyville is without humor—far from it.... This is a portrait of a woman in decline, but still very much alive and committed to getting the lion’s share of mini-Snickers at every opportunity. When things are left unsaid between parents and children, it leaves a hurt that can never be completely repaired, but love and dedication can make those scarred places into works of art. Bettyville is one such masterpiece.
BookPage
A gay magazine editor and writer's account of how he returned home to the Midwest from New York to care for his aging mother.... But when he returned to Paris [Missouri], it was with a greater acceptance of who he was: not the son Betty might have wanted or expected, but the son who would see her through the "strange days" of her final years of life. Movingly honest, at times droll, and ultimately poignant.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
(We'll add specific questions if and when they're made available by the publisher.)