Customer Reviews

The Mighty Queens of Freeville: The True Story of a Mother, a Daughter, and the Town That Raised Them

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
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1 star:		(0)

 

 

Fans of Amy Dickinson won't be disappointed at this peek into the columnist's life. Those unfamiliar with her writing will still be intrigued and enjoy this interesting autobiography. The advice columnist reveals the starts and stops on her road to success. Readers get to know her family and, a character in its own right, the village of Freeville. The women that surround Amy are a joy to get to know. Since Amy narrates her own writing, its an even more special treat. She does a great job reading, with nice pacing and authentic emphasis to produce emotional tones. Women will especially love this audiobook.

Author Amy Dickinson was a free-lance writer in 2002, when she applied to the Chicago Tribune to succeed the iconic advice columnist Ann Landers. Dickinson and the other candidates answered some sample questions which were then read by a test group of readers. The readers' first choice was to bring Ann Landers back from the dead, no surprise since her five-decade tenure as syndicated advice columnist gave her her an unbeatable edge. Once that was ruled out, Dickinson got the job.

"It's not the sort of job a person can train for," she writes, but in The Mighty Queens of Freeville: The True Story of a Mother, a Daughter, and the Town That Raised Them she gives us the story of her life and experience. Raised on a "failed dairy farm" in upper New York State, she comes from a family of self-sufficient women whose men generally don't stay around. When Dickinson's husband joined what she calls the "tidal outflow" of men, leaving her with a baby daughter to raise, she went home to Freeville and was nurtured by the women of her family.

Dickinson's writing is entertaining and self-deprecatory. Single parenthood, "mothering without a net," sets the parameters of her life as she supports herself and her daughter with her writing, teaching, and working for National Public Radio. Social life? Not much, except for the regular breakfasts with her mother, sisters and aunts.

I enjoyed this audio presentation, read entertainingly by the author. She does, however, focus heavily on her own struggles and stresses at the expense of many other things we might like to know. The story is organized around themes like divorce, dating, buying a house, contacts with her father decades after he left her mother: much moving back and forth over her history. She has a clever way of sketching her characters but we learn little about them.

If this memoir were a novel, it could have been written by Fannie Flagg, author of novels including STANDING IN THE RAINBOW and FRIED GREEN TOMATOES AT THE WHISTLE STOP CAFE: the strong women, the nurturing home towns, the family values, the situations that seem absurd to the onlooker but somehow make sense within the sphere of the story. Dickinson's style pulls the reader into that groove where real life sounds like fiction and entertains us; Flagg, I suppose, does the opposite. Four stars for THE MIGHTY QUEENS.

Linda Bulger, 2009

I enjoyed the story very much. It was very heartwarming and charming. Amy Dickinson is a capable writer and draws you into her stories. I really prefer books on cd as I can listen to them in my car.

Great Book!! Lent to be by a friend and I bought two as gifts, Both well received.