Mennonite in a Little Black Dress by Rhoda Janzen

This book was a very fun read.  It's a memoir of Janzen's return home to her Mennonite parents after the collapse of her marriage.  Parts of her life are perfect for a memoir - for example, her husband of fifteen years leaves her for a man named Bob who he meets on Gay.com.  Seriously.  But it is also her excellent writing, ability to write humorously, and willingness to share things that others might find too private or too shameful, that make this book so good.  I laughed out loud repeatedly while reading this - causing Web to ask a few times just what could be so funny about a book about Mennonites. 

Janzen's memoir covers a lot of ground: she reports on her marriage (arguably broken from the start), her upbringing in an austere, frugal, and loving Mennonite family, relationships with her siblings, and her educational path.  She also spends several chapters educating the reader wryly about Mennonite customs and culture, incidentally, it seems, reflecting on how growing up in that background shaped her choices and beliefs as an adult.  She takes the reader through her emotional convalescence and how she comes out of it both more independent and, at the same time, more rooted in the things she grew up with. 

At the end of the book, she writes a short afterword which summarizes Mennonite history.  It might have been nice to have that sprinkled throughout the book.  That said, I don't have any other criticisms of this book - like most good memoirs, it was brave, funny, and felt like a friend telling me their particularly interesting life story.