Bettyville by George Hodgman – 279 pages
Book Blurb:
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.
My Review: 3 stars
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I think I began to read Bettyville at a time when I needed a faster paced book. My own personal weights of suddenly having an empty nest may have dampened the experience of this book.
The writing itself was excellent and the author’s attention to detail put all my senses smack in the middle of Paris, Missouri, yet at the same time, this is a book that I could easily put down and wait days before coming back to.
This is perhaps a book that’ll I come back to and reread at a different time to see if it alters my review.
Quotes I liked:
I am a loner, but I hate to lose people. I can only imagine how scary it is to know that the person one is losing is oneself.”
– “I have given up trying to control her clothes. G-d grant me the serenity to accept the clothes I cannot change.”
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