Another Review at MyShelf.Com

Publisher: Virtualbookworm.com Publishing Inc
Release Date: 2002
ISBN: 1589392388
Awards:
Format Reviewed:
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Genre: Fiction / Chick Lit
Reviewer: Carolyn Howard-Johnson 
Reviewer Notes: Carolyn Howard-Johnson is the author of This is the Place and Harkening: A Collection of Stories Remembered.

 

Hey Dorothy, You're Not in Kansas Anymore
By Karen Mueller Bryson

After A Cyclone
Finding the Humor and Future in
Life's Disasters

     I was intrigued by the title of Karen Mueller Bryson's book, and who wouldn't be? The English-speaking world has been mightily affected by the metaphor of Oz. Hey Dorothy, You're Not in Kansas Anymore does not disappoint.

     A young woman loses her father in a freak accident. She is one of a family with enough peccadilloes among them to keep any reader fascinated. She decides she will sleep her pain away, her mother decides she will run away with a cult, and brother decides to bury himself in his achievements and try to ignore the whole mess. The pain in this family is palpable, but so is their zest for living. Those who loved Bridget Jones's Diary may like this book even better. It has the snap of the new genre called chick lit to which "Diary" is a prominent member; like "Diary", it explores the pain that twenty-something's often experience in a society that isn't keen on letting them grow up.

     What makes this novel better is that Our Dear Dorothy is just more likeable than Bridget because she is not quite so needy, quite so miserable, is just less of a cookie-cutter character all around.

     What makes this novel move along so quickly is the author's background as a playwright. The dialogue is quick and convincing. The grounding is much like a theater production. The settings are sufficiently presented but do not dominate. Mostly, the humor is so natural. I laughed out loud three times in the first two chapters and chuckled even more often. All in all, this book is a good lesson that the absurd may be found in the most agonizing of situations and that it works ever so well as a healer.

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