Thursday, June 11, 2009

I LOVE YOU, MISS HUDDLESTON
And other inappropriate longings of my Indiana childhood
Philip Gulley – Harper Collins - $34.99

Reviewed by Bookman Beattie on Radio New Zealand National's Nine to Noon programme earlier today.

This memoir by author and Quaker pastor Philip Gulley is an entertaining and witty read. He is something of a cross between Bill Bryson and Garrison Keillor, although not quite in their league. But there is that same skilled ear for the small town, the same sort of good-natured humour and folksy conversation all seen in the fun they all bring to ordinary happenings.

In his preface he quotes Gordon Livingston as saying: “ Memory is not, as many of us think, an accurate transcription of past experience. Rather it is a story we tell ourselves about our past, full of distortions, wishful thinking, and unfulfilled dreams.”
The author then goes on to say that I Love You, Miss Huddleston is the story I have told myself about my adolescence.
Those who shared those years with me might remember them differently. That is their prerogative, just as it is my right to make things more lively than they might have been. I am probably a little more exciting in the following pages than I was in real life.

Brilliant opening I reckon and indeed while reading the book you can tell often that he is exaggerating the truth somewhat, always in a humorous vein in order to make a good story better.
The book is the story of his life in Danville, Indiana, his remembered boyhood up to the age of eighteen when he left home but in a nice touch there is a two page epilogue which briefly brings us up to date with what he has done in the 30 years since.
He was raised a Catholic but in his teens became a Quaker and he handles the religious aspects of his life with a light and entertaining touch. In fact some of it is laugh-out-loud material.
This for example –
Sister Mary John had shown us a flannelgraph of the apostles receiving the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost. They looked quite happy, except that their hair was on fire. . . . I was suspicious of a religion whose highpoint was the igniting of one's head, and my enthusiasm for church, which had never been great, began to fade.

Gulley’s father was a central figure in his childhood years and one suspects he gained his storytelling ability from him. This is the man who told young Philip that he had won their house in a poker game. Like the author it is clear that his father was an exaggerator in the interests of a good story.

These are the sixties and seventies in small town mid-west America, Danville’s population was just 5000, and along with his best friends Peanut and Suds they explore the town on their bikes, they visit the local junkyard, we learn of their school experiences, they are of course obsessed with girls, in his teens the girls always loved Philip as a brother and didn’t want to risk their relationship by engaging in any activity that might lead to hurt feelings, we learn of their hilarious family holidays, always built around fishing in remote locales, the Halloween escapades, the parent’s bad car purchases, and the day they threw tomatoes at passing cars.
Here he is about Junior high school which he calls a study in humiliation “where we had to do two things designed to strike fear into the heart of any adolescent boy – shower nude in front of others, and learn to dance”.
They were pretty much carefree days though and he writes of them in an engaging manner.

The author’s childhood was a happy one, he has fond and positive memories of it, and he shares those memories with us in this frequently delightful memoir. This is a light and happy read. If you have someone who needs cheering up, perhaps confined to bed, or grieving, give them this book, it will make the feel much better.
http://www.philipgulleybooks.com/AuthorBlog.cfm

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