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Book Review of Mennonite in a Little Black Dress: A Memoir of Going Home

Mennonite in a Little Black Dress: A Memoir of Going Home


This book didn't hold my interest throughout though there were amusing incidents and turns of phrase. I guess most telling is that it didn't make me want to explore poetry or more books by the same author. Rhoda has a marriage where her husband leaves her to be with another male, a surgical complication, and a car accident so she comes home to her Mennonite mom and dad. What, at first, appears to be a snooty, surface-sophisticated wonderment at Mennonite beliefs and ways, eventually resolves itself and this reader felt she was trying to make small incidents appear large and important in terms of religion and spiritual development. She doesn't spare any peculiarities within her family. By the end of the book I was hoping she'd soon get on her feet and leave these nice people alone. Perhaps her family did too?