Book Review: Mennonite in a Little Black Dress

{Note: To those who limit yourselves to only Christian fiction and/or nonfiction, this book may not be one you'd like to read.}

I have finished reading this little gem of a memoir that I picked up on a recent run through Target. The title caught my eye and the back cover blurb sealed the fate of the book to end up in my cart headed to the checkout line!

The back cover blurb reads:

Not long after Rhoda Janzen turned forty, her world turned upside down. It was bad enough that her husband of fifteen years left her for Bob, a guy he met on Gay.com, but that same week a car accident left her injured. Needing a place to rest and pick up the pieces of her life, Rhoda packed her bags, crossed the country, and returned to her quirky Mennonite family's home, where she was welcomed back with open arms and offbeat advice. (Rhoda's good-natured mother suggested she get over her heartbreak by dating her first cousin—he owned a tractor, see.)

Written with wry humor and huge personality—and tackling faith, love, family, and aging—Mennonite in a Little Black Dress is an immensely moving memoir of healing, certain to touch anyone who has ever had to look homeward in order to move ahead.

As I have shared in many of my book reviews, memoir is one of my favorite genres. I am drawn to it for some unknown reason. In this case, I could also add that I have an odd fascination with the Amish community and am thus also interested in hearing about the "break-off" group, the Mennonites. Jantzen notes that the Amish broke away from the Mennonites because they were too liberal. She writes, "A liberal Mennonite is an oxymoron if there ever was one."

The back cover is only a slightly pulled back curtain of the humor and truth that is found throughout this book. Here are some of my favorites:

Jantzen shares a bit about carrying lunch boxes to Elementary School filled with "Shame-Based Foods" (a phrase coined by she and her younger sister, Hannah). I'll not go into each of them, suffice it to say that Borscht is one, however. I laughed out loud, though when Rhoda writes about long-suffering complaints about her lunchpail. She notes that most children had Aquaman or Underdog on their pails. She secretly wished that a "Josie and the Pussycats lunchbox could have rescued her from the pit of uncoolness." She continues: "I figured that Josie and the Pussycats would magically make up for knee-length homemade skirts or the blonde tails braided with neurotic precision, like Heidi on crack." Instead Jantzen had to carry a navy vinyl bag with a long strap, which she asserts was a diaper bag. She claims this experience explains her interest in Prada today!

Throughout the book Jantzen shares her Mother with the reader. The New York Times Book Reviewer notes that Jantzen's mother, Mary, welcomes her divorced, broken-boned, nonreligious, academic daughter back with open arms, without judgment, castigation or undue coddling. She sings endless songs, each odder and funnier than the last, fills a freezer with mini-jars of strawberry jam to take to the elderly and suggests calmly, in line one day at Circuit City, that Janzen should marry her cousin Waldemar, who it happens is also a professor. (“Wally is my first cousin,” Janzen reminds her. “That’s both incestuous and illegal.” The women then engage in a conversation about the relative merits of marrying a pothead versus a man with a tractor.)" This is a lady I would love to meet. Shoot I'd love to taste some of her homemade jelly (in the little jars)!

I loved her response when Rhoda asked her Mother about whether she thinks it odd that her sons seem more conservative than she and Jantzen's father. Her Mom replies: "Oh, they'll mellow over time. When you're young, faith is often a matter of rules. When you should do and shouldn't do, that kind of thing. but as you get older, you realize that faith is really a matter of relationship--with God, with the people around you, with the members of your community." And to that, this reader would shout a hearty "AMEN!"

This book is by no means a "faith-based" memoir. It does not hint of Jantzen's glorious return to the faith of her father/mother. Jantzen even applied for seminary at one point in her academic career. Instead it's a gentle story of love and acceptance for her journey. She's raw. She's honest. I like that.

I love Jantzen's recollection of a phone conversation with her friend Alba shortly after her OCD husband left her. She was returning a bottle of olive oil to its place in the kitchen and had to replace it with the front facing sideways. She found herself reaching over to straighten the bottle and make it match the other bottles near it. She writes, "Personally, I didn't care whether the front of the bottle was ninety degrees skewed. It was Nick who would have cared. And Nick wasn't there. I experimentally turned the bottle sideways again, to see how it felt to defy my husband's rage for order. Then I stared at the sideways bottle in brief but silent agitation." This is when she realizes that "Fifteen years [of marriage] cannot be rotated a quarter-turn to the left, just like that."

This book is well worth the time to read it. I have to be honest, though, Jantzen uses a rich vocabulary that occasionally gave me pause. In fact, while writing this review my husband came out to see if I was "looking up word meanings." I had reported to him earlier that I felt as though there were times I needed a dictionary by my side to really read and comprehend. Despite stretching my vocabulary, this book is beautifully written, very funny, and simply enjoyable from cover to cover!