This is not Doris

Please don’t eat the daisies, Jean Kerr,1954
**
I discovered this book a small used book store at the beach in North Carolina.  I am a big Doris Day fan, so I thought, “How cute!  Its the book that the movie was based on.”  Well, it is the book that the movie was based on, but that is where all similarity ends.  In fact the book is pretty saucy compared to the movie which features Doris Day as a housewife and mother of 4 rowdy boys.

Please don’t eat the daisies is a collection of essays by Jean Kerr about her life as a playwright, mother and wife in the early 50’s.  She writes frankly that her goal in life had always been to sleep late, so she married and found a career that enabled her to do just that.  I am really interested in vintage books, but rarely do I come across anything so frank from a woman’s perspective.  I highly recommend this collection of essays if you ever come across it.  I don’t have kids, but I found what Jean Kerr says about her own pretty funny.  She survives her 4 boys  and juggles home and work with wit and brazen style.  Or at least, she writes that she does.

Don’t expect the Doris Day version, the real thing is so much more.

the way the crow flies

the way the crow flies, Ann-Marie MacDonald
**

This novel is different from what I expected from the book jacket description.  Most notably because the majority of the book takes place in the main character’s childhood.  It is not as much an adult quest for truth as a revelation of the whole truth.  In looking back, what was forgotten or overlooked by Madeleine and those around her and what wasn’t, becomes the poignancy of this book.

I liked this novel because it dealt with being a military family.  Growing up as an army brat, I related to much of the main characters’ lives.  I also enjoyed the brutal honesty that is laid out for the reader to see, yet the characters just stumble around it.

the way the crow flies is not a lovely book or a happy one.  But it is sensitively written,  and Ann-Marie MacDonald gives the most ordinary cleaning rag rich color with her words.  This novel is definitely worth reading.  It may just make you look at your personal life events differently.