Book Review: She Got Up Off the Couch, by Haven Kimmel

Another book from my 90% off Borders Going Out of Business stash. I picked it up and put it back down at least twice before deciding it was worth the $1.40 required for its purchase.

Good thing they put the word "Zippy" on the cover.  The name Haven Kimmel didn't ring any bells (beside the brief wondering if she's in any relation to Jimmy) and I wasn't sure the phrase She Got Up Off the Couch sounded very promising.  But, the sight of "Bestselling Author of A Girl Named Zippy" is what kept causing me to add it back into my "yes" pile.  I'd heard of this Zippy before.  I'd read marvelous reviews of this previous book and wondered if it was possible to read the sequel first and still figure out what was going on. 

That answer ended up being "yes".

Haven Kimmel (whom I'm sure is working under pen name) is one of the most brilliantly comical authors I've ever read in my entire life.  This memoir, as well as the---as yet unread by me---A Girl Named Zippy, chronicle her hilarious, somewhat dysfunctional, upbringing in rural Indiana.  The book is written as if being directly beamed from her past adolescent mind.  She's unapologetically goofy, awkward and tomboyish with a charmingly intelligent way of sounding childlike.

This book passed my ultimate litmus test of having something quoteable on each and every page.  To prove this to you ('cause this speaks volumes in comparison to any lousy reveiw I could write) I have randomly opened the book in several places and typed out the first sentence that caught my eye on each page:

• "The couch in the den was the color the crayon people called Flesh..." 
• "Mom leaned toward the windshield as if she could make the car go faster." 
• "Just a glance at persimmons reveals them to be suspicious fruits and yet we ate them constantly." 
• When her dad let a mysterious vagabound camp out in their backyard: "I didn't have much experience with tents, but God knows I wanted some." 
• As she silently protested her teenaged sister's marriage: "I moved and felt like a zombie, only without the flesh-eating joy that seems to drive zombies around neighborhoods like Jehovah's Witnesses." 
• On being forced to attend church camp: "I would not sing Kum-Bye-Ya around the campfire.  I would not play games of tag in the dark, where the boys and girls were allowed to hunt for one another, and find each other, in ways that made my veins run cold." 
• "My sister pulled up...and said she was heading to Grant's department store...and wanted to know if I'd like to ride along.  Grant's meant one thing and one thing only---a frozen cherry Coke, for which I would have compromised any principle---but I had my rats to worry about." 
• When speaking of her favorite song: "Beep Beep (The Little Nash Rambler), by the Playmates. A morality tale about a little car...This song brilliantly gains momentum, and is sung faster and faster right up to the hysterical ending.  Could be sung in the truck so frantically the father in question would sometimes have to stick his head out his open window while praying aloud." 
• "Olive's body had been covered with stretch marks and varicose veins, like a map you turn over and can never make sense of."
• On escorting her mother on her first solo purchase of a used car: "I could only whistle and shake my head as proxy for my dad, who was neither there nor did he know we were."
• "I once overheard Mom refer to a man as someone who Had Accidents for a Living.  I was fairly certain this was my vocation, too, and I wished I could interview the man to figure out how one got paid for what came naturally to me." 
• On her dad's adventures as a volunteer deputy sheriff: "Dad reached around and thrust his hand in the Bad Check Man's mouth...getting severely bitten in the process.  This caused him to wind up in the emergency room, and when he got home he explained the extreme dangerousness of human saliva, which sounded as toxic as hyena spit." 
• On meeting a colleague of her mother's: "Ted was the drama teacher and he made all the plays happen.  He was the cleanest-looking person I'd ever met...and..he had the straightest, whitest teeth on Planet Earth.  They were like a shining white tooth bracelet."

If you chuckled at least six times above, pick up She Got Up Off the Couch today.  It won't change your life, but it just might heighten your reading standards and make you smile.  Alot.  Yes, it is a sequel, but you won't be lost without having read it's predecessor.  By the end you'll wonder what happens to her family next and start praying for a third volume.  And, while you're at it, someone pick me up that Zippy book, stat!  My funny bone is itchin'!