Friday, November 4, 2011

Book Review: A Girl Named Zippy, by Haven Kimmel

You know the chatty kid in your neighborhood?  The one who always seems to catch you at the end of the driveway and always at that precise moment when it's too late to bolt out of there unseen?  The one who from that point on will steadily chew the hearing bits right out of your ears with their nasally comments, incessant opinions and overly-intimate question-asking?  Well, meet Zippy!

A Girl Named Zippy is the first memoir by Haven Kimmel (nickname: Zippy, pen name: Haven Kimmel, actual name: who really knows!), which was followed up by the sequel memoir She Got Up Off the Couch which I had read first, out of order, and reviewed on an earlier post.

It turns out once you walk away from that nosy, overly-chatty neighbor kid and let them age about thirty years, they can become quite delightful story-tellers!  Your ears remaining a safe distance by this time and your eyes doing all the work now by reading their memoir.  You won't need to patiently wait out your escape, because you're finally in control of the amount of listening you're willing to donate and a simple bookmark-placing now signals your easy exit.

I really enjoyed Zippy, but I'm still a little more partial to Couch.  Maybe because I read it first.  Maybe because the sequel delved more into her family of characters, whereas Zippy focused more on her own personal adventures and tales of her hometown and old school friends.  Not sub par by any means, though, and still one of my favorite books I've read this year. 

It's interesting to have a peek inside the mind a childhood EXTRA-extrovert.  Especially being the complete polar opposite of my timid self growing up.  She writes in such a way that it's almost as if she's summoned her childhood voice into her pen, but found a way to shape it into an aged-with-wisdom mold of each chapter.  Silly, whimsical, charming tales, spoken in true hilarity, but wrapped up with a tidy bow and making perfect sense in all its silliness.  I love her voice.  I speak this language!

I can certainly relate to all her tomboy adventures, being an outdoorsy kid myself once upon a time.  (Her adventures always ending up with about a quart more spilt blood than mine, however.)  There's one thing that did make me cringe  a bit though.  Some of the sights she describes having seen growing up in rural Indiana is probably what places this book one bullet point lower on my "top reads" list than its sequel.  Let's just say not all of her neighbors were especially kind to animals.  And, if your stomach curdles too at such tales, you might want to skip the chapter titled "Unexpected Injuries" (beginning on page 61 for fellow paperback readers) and just flip ahead to the next one.  In fact, any mention of Petey Scroggs or his family is your cue to skim ahead until his name disappears.  He taints the fun of the book (and thankfully he moves out of the neighborhood soon after he's mentioned.  His home reoccupied by a good, Christian, animal-loving family.) But, Petey aside, the rest (I promise) is thoroughly enjoyable.

I like it, I love it, I want more of it.  I know Zippy/Haven/Whoever has more tales to tell and it's with that assumption I say "Bring it on!  Memoir three please!"

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