Not my cuppa

Treyf

My Life as an Unorthodox Outlaw

by Elissa Altman

I fully expected to love this and I disappointed myself. I can't think of reasons to blame the author for my lack of love, but I can think of reasons in myself.  First and foremost is, I'm not so interested in reading such a personal memoir right now. I'm in the mood for some big-bang travel writing; or some meaty nonfiction.  Like Before the Dawn.

Maybe trying to stick to a book to-read list is a stupid thing. You put things on it when they appeal to you, but you soon build up a 70-book backlog and the next one up is always the book you wanted to read eight months ago.  I can rearrange the list, I guess, but then I suspect I'll simply keep moving books to the end and building up a larger and larger list.

But this book survived at least three "culls" and I still didn't like it.  A lot of it was about the family of the author, not the author herself, and sometimes it was so journalistic that it fell flat.  Example:

The afternoon before I leave [for summer camp], my mother packs my lunch in a brown paper bag as directed by the camp's ten-point list of instructions. She wants to make me the usual water-packed tuna with mayonnaise on untoasted diet white that she sends me to school with almost every day; I want Underwood Deviled Ham.

"Where did you hear of such a thing?" Gaga asks, looking up from her ironing. [Gaga is her grandmother]

"On television," I say.

"You don't even know what deviled ham is," my mother says, sighing.

"Neither do you," Gaga answers her, folding my camp shorts. "Come to think of it," she murmurs, "neither do I."

But because no Jewish mother or grandmother has ever said no to a food request made by her child, Gaga shuts off the iron, grabs her purse, and marches down Austin Street to the Associated grocery store. She returns ten minutes later, with a kosher pumpernickel raisin loaf and a single paper-wrapped can of Underwood Deviled ham.

[Then her mother makes the sandwich with the entire can of ham and wraps it in tinfoil."
It sits in the fridge overnight where the meat congeals into salty, porky spackle. At lunchtime, Elissa daintily eats the ham while her friend eats peanut butter and jelly.]

I pat the corners of my mouth with my napkin, roll up my bag, and am instantly and violently ill.

Possibly Ms. Altman was taught to show a story, not tell it. And that's what she did, with clarity and detail. But I failed to connect--I was just watching and never feeling.  I can imagine other people loving it; I did not.