Review: The Mighty Queens of Freeville

The Mighty Queens of Freeville, by Amy Dickinson







The Down and Dirty

These are the loose memoirs of Amy Dickinson, the woman chosen to replace advice columnist extraordinaire Ann Landers. Her childhood, failed marriage, single motherhood and wayward pets are all fair game for this humorous look-back at her life before and after Ask Amy.

I wondered if there was a military academy somewhere in the Maine woods that would accept an oversize toddler with anger management issues. I had it all figured out. I would drop Emily off along with her Beauty and the Beast backpack. Then I would drive quickly away and go to a roadside diner, sit at the counter, and eat a big piece of pie. All by myself.
The Mighty Queens of Freeville, by Amy Dickinson

The Literary Criticism

Billed as a memoir, Dickinson's book is perhaps better described as a loose collection of cute anecdotes about her family, her divorce, her pets, or anything else that comes to mind. Pieced together a bit haphazardly, Dickinson nonetheless has a sharp, witty voice that shines through no matter the seriousness of the subject matter:

Though divorce runs through my clan like an aggressive chromosome, I had never been exposed to family ugliness of any sort, partly because my parents' divorce happened after my father simply and suddenly walked away from our home. I never saw my parents argue before, during, or after their split. One advantage to actual abandonment is that it cuts down on marital discord. In order to fight with my father, my mother would have had to to locate him first.
The Mighty Queens of Freeville, by Amy Dickinson

The ex-husband gets repeatedly skewered throughout the book (apparently time, in fact, does not heal all wounds), but that's the price one pays when an ex-spouse has a national platform on which to skew as she wishes.

While the anectdotes were very enjoyable, there is a lack of focus on the original focus of the book, namely the female family members who inspire the title. The snippets of aunts, sisters and especially her mother leave you feeling it just wasn't enough. What the reader does get, however, is a snapshot of life that is easy to relate to and produces a chuckle or two.



Our Recommendation

If you love humor applied to the human condition, we're willing to bet you'd enjoy this one, as long as you don't have expectations of a thorough and introspective autobiography. Uplifting and never trite, Amy Dickinson touches on struggles common to all of us, meets those troubles head-on and shows us why we should never, ever give up.

Available in bookstores today.





Title: The Mighty Queens of Freeville
Author: Amy Dickinson
ISBN-13: 978-1401322854
240 pages
Publisher: Hyperion
Date: February 3, 2009



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