Getting Serious with "Sure Signs of Crazy"

Sometimes trying to describe a book succinctly does it a real disservice, because the story itself is hard to encapsulate well. I’m risking that by giving a short description, but here goes.

In Sure Signs of Crazy, 12-year-old Sarah Nelson and her alcoholic father have moved from town to town in Texas throughout her young life. She usually spends summers with her grandparents, but is hoping for something different this summer. She is growing up, though no one seems to recognize it. She loves words and plants, and she is obsessed with Atticus Finch of To Kill a Mockingbird (that was enough to win me over all by itself).

But looming large over everything else is the fact that her mother is in a mental hospital as a result of her attempt to drown Sarah when she was only two years old, and she succeeded in drowning Sarah’s twin brother. Sarah is haunted by the thought that she too could be headed down the road to mental illness, and she searches herself for signs.

Author Karen Harrington either kept excellent notes during her own experience of this age or she has observed others very closely; she completely nails what it is to be a girl on the edge of adolescence. Sarah wants so badly to be taken seriously by those older than her, and at the same time she wants to be taken care of by her father in the way that any child deserves.

When I first looked at the book, I thought that this was an odd choice of storylines for young people, and I thought that people living with mental illness should not be something that you fear--even the use of the word "crazy" seems immediately pejorative. Somehow the author walks that dangerous line successfully. Part of the reason for that is that it's from the perspective of a traumatized girl, and that is probably how she would describe her mother.

While this novel deals with some pretty heavy-hitting events, it does so with a gentle touch and an honest love for all of the characters. The publisher lists this as a novel for ages 9 and up—I’d bump that minimum age up to mature 12-year-olds. But I’m living proof the book isn’t limited to the children’s market--I couldn't put it down.

Friday Noon Movie Club: The Nonstop Adventures of Tintin

Yesterday the Friday Noon Movie Club met for its Christmas week outing: The Adventures of Tintin. That makes it sound like 50-some of us got together for a big party, but in reality, as usual I had the great fortune of having two good friends surprise me, with a total of eight kids among the three of us. We filled up a row, passed around a bag of popcorn, and sat back to enjoy. Before enjoying Tintin, however, we got to enjoy some previews. For some reason, both Hugo and Tintin have included a preview for the reincarnation of Titanic—Titanic in 3D. First of all, why? But more to the point, why at a kids’ movie? Thanks to an old Foxtrot comic book that dealt extensively with Titanic (hilarious, by the way), my kids are already intrigued, but now they’ve pretty much seen all the highlights of the movie, save a few moments that they will not yet be watching. But I digress.


The Adventures of Tintin is two movies. First, it is the movie adaptation of the 1930s comics series, a comic series that continues to be vital in Europe, though lesser known in the US. Many missionary kids I have had contact with knew something about Tintin. Second, it is Steven Spielberg’s revisitation of Raiders of the Lost Ark, in animation form. It’s a very exciting movie, and there were some moments that had us all on the edge of our seats. It’s also a movie with lots of guns, even machine guns, with one scene that is a Raiders throwback, but IMHO really has no place in a movie for children—the man outside the door gets shot, the bullets go through the door, and when the door opens, the man falls in. On the other hand, in spite of the violence, Tintin himself doesn’t resort to murder, and most shooting, swashbuckling and combat happen without us taking a close look at it.

Another odd portion of the storyline was devoted to the alcohol addiction of Captain Haddock. That was an interesting twist, because as a child I saw plenty of alcohol on TV and movies—Otis the town drunk on The Andy Griffith Show, omnipresent cocktails on 70s sitcoms, even the sisters’ special “recipe” on The Waltons. It was generally either the norm or comic relief. In Tintin, alcoholism is both comic relief and recognized as a problem that needs to be changed. Not quite sure what my kids took away from that. Probably more informative than my intense curiosity about a “scotch on the rocks” from the Mary Tyler Moore episodes I watched in reruns after school.

There were some portions of the movie that did a particularly good job of bringing the audience along. One scene had Tintin skimming down a cable, zip-line style. And Tintin is a very likeable character—always ready for adventure, always looking for the story like the reporter he is.

Mostly, my girls were captivated by Snowy, Tintin’s loyal dog and sidekick. There was plenty of humor, and we had a good time. It was a little too long and a little too nonstop. One of my fellow attendees said that the Dove foundation rated it good for 12 and up, due to the violence. I can understand that, but I guess I’d think about the kid you want to take. Some are less affected than others and can handle more than others. Allison, 8, seems to have come away unscathed.

Think I might need to check out some Tintin comics from the library. Maybe then I could actually give a book report on my book blog...(really, I AM reading).

Lighting up a Dark Path

The Fab 5 convened today for a second meeting about the book Lit. We met last week to choose books for the next 6 months (oh happy day!) and to talk about Lit, but since 3 of us had not yet finished, we postponed the Lit discussion until lunch this week. More on our book selection later.

Mary Karr's newest memoir, Lit, follows her descent into alcoholism, then her rescue by a God she disbelieved, resented and tenuously relied upon in the absence of any other prospects. Readers experience Karr as she was at each stage of the book--she does an excellent job of giving us a look at the workings of her heart, her head and her mouth through each part of the journey.

Her story is not a pretty one, and she hasn't whitewashed it for us now. I've read her memoir, Cherry, which deals with her adolescence, and the same could be said for it. This is a woman who has been damaged in so many ways, from early childhood on, that it's amazing she has survived to this point, let alone become a successful writer and professor.

Don't read this book if you are looking for a nice, uplifting and inspirational story that wraps up neatly. And don't read this book if you can't abide vulgar language--there is plenty of it.

Mary Karr is very honest about who she was, who she wanted to be, and how she got so far off track. She writes with darkness and sarcasm, with beauty and humor. The humor is the saving grace of it when she's writing about awful things. Such as when her recently sober mother fell off the wagon just in time to be high for Mary's rehearsal dinner. Mother looked at Mary's soon-to-be father-in-law, a WASPy moneyed New Englander, and "offered to paint Mr. Whitbread in the nude and quote fix anything you need fixed close quote." Her mother is a character beyond belief in Karr's memoirs, and a big part of both the agony and the crazy humor of her life.

Barbara brought up the story of Karr's first AA meeting, where she listens to a gentrified woman explaining how she hid her bottle of vodka in a turkey carcass in the freezer so that her family wouldn't find it. One night "she couldn't midwife the bottle out, so she just upended the whole bird, guzzling out of it. She says, And that was my moment of clarity, thinking, Other people just don't drink like this." How often do you find humor in someone's fight to be sober, humor that does not diminish the seriousness of the fight itself?

Karr's gift to the reader is her honesty, particularly about her spiritual journey. She describes her struggle with belief, describing each time that a different point of her own opposition to her own fledgling faith gave way. God reeled her in kicking and screaming. Good friends and advisers kept her moving forward in spite of her own resistance. Sonya pointed out that Karr's AA friends were never judgmental; they just spoke the truth as they saw it and didn't let her off the hook. And they pushed her to begin praying, which changed everything for her, much as she hated it.

None of us have read her first memoir, The Liar's' Club, and some of the references to her childhood made us curious. Nancy really wants to know what happened in Colorado. Sort of like the attraction one would have to a train wreck, Barbara says.

Lit is the story of a woman who found God when she didn't really want to, a sinner like the rest of us who had hit rock bottom and had no other way to go. Turned out she wanted to find him after all.

One last note--after weeding out many books we would like to read, we came up with the following list for the next 6 months:
The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein
Half the Sky by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn
Reservation Blues by Sherman Alexie
Sarah's Key by Tatiana deRosnay
Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout
I Am Number Four by Pittacus Lore

Won't you read with us?