Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Oct 2009
256 pages
Genre: Biography/Memoir
Publication Information
Not long after Rhoda Janzen turned forty, her world turned upside down. It was bad enough that her brilliant husband of fifteen years left her for Bob, a guy he met on Gay.com, but that same week a car accident left her with serious injuries. What was a gal to do? Rhoda packed her bags and went home. This wasn't just any home, though. This was a Mennonite home. While Rhoda had long ventured out on her own spiritual path, the conservative community welcomed her back with open arms and offbeat advice. (Rhoda's good-natured mother suggested she date her first cousin—he owned a tractor, see.) It is in this safe place that Rhoda can come to terms with her failed marriage; her desire, as a young woman, to leave her sheltered world behind; and the choices that both freed and entrapped her.
BookBrowse Review
"Glib humor runs from start to finish through this memoir serving to further undermine a story structure already confusing and jumbled, leaving us to wonder - and your point is?" - BJ Hegedus
Other Reviews
"Starred Review. Women will immediately warm to the self-deprecating honesty with which she describes the efforts of friends and family to help her re-establish her emotional well-being." - Publishers Weekly
"This soulful, affecting first memoir...will enchant anyone who has ever gone back home after suffering a setback." - Library Journal
"This book is not just beautiful and intelligent, but also painfully - even wincingly - funny. It is rare that I literally laugh out loud while I'm reading, but Rhoda Janzen's voice - singular, deadpan, sharp-witted and honest - slayed me, with audible results. I have a list already of about fourteen friends who need to read this book. I will insist that they read it. Because simply put, this the most delightful memoir I've read in ages." - Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love
"Dad's many charms include a maddening passivity and a penchant for public prayer at Denny's. But it was mom's lark-in-springtime personality that had me in hysterics. Peppered with Menno recipes, Janzen's memoir is a tasty treat." - Linda Bubon, Publishers Weekly Galley Talk
This information about Mennonite in a Little Black Dress was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Rhoda Janzen holds a PhD from the University of California, Los Angeles, where she was the University of California Poet Laureate in 1994 and 1997. She is the author of Babel's Stair, a collection of poems, and her poems have also appeared in Poetry, The Yale Review, The Gettysburg Review, and The Southern Review. She teaches English and creative writing at Hope College in Holland, Michigan.
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