Mennonite in a Little Black Dress

Rhoda Janzen

From Shelf: Other Rooms, Other Lives - memoirs, biography, and non-fiction of time and place

Sometimes you have to go back in order to move forward: the number one US bestseller now available in the UK.

Shortlisted for the Thurber Prize for American Humor22 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list'Wonderfully intelligent and frank... I loved this book, and Rhoda Janzen. She is a terrific, pithy, beautiful writer, a reliable, sympathetic narrator and a fantastically good sport.' New York TimesRhoda Janzen had reached a crossroads: she had just hit forty when her brilliant husband of fifteen years left her for a guy he met on Gay.com. In the same calamitous week she was hospitalized in a horrible car accident. With no alternatives, Rhoda decided to pack her bags and head home. into the heart of the Christian sect she had spent years longing to escape.Rhoda Janzen might be a bad Mennonite, but nonetheless, her parents and their community welcome her back with open arms, strange food and offbeat advice. ('Why not date your first cousin? He has his own tractor!') It was in this safe place that Rhoda came to terms with her failed marriage; the desire, as a young woman, to leave her sheltered world behind; and the choices that had both freed and entrapped her.'This book is not just beautiful and intelligent, but also painfully - even wincingly - funny. It is rare that I literally laugh out loud while I'm reading, but Rhoda Janzen's voice - singular, deadpan, sharp-witted and honest - slayed me, with audible results. I have a list already of about fourteen friends who need to read this book. I will insist that they read it. Because simply put, this is the most delightful memoir I've read in ages.' Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love

Currently unavailable to Buy Local