abrswf's review against another edition
3.0
I wanted to like this book much more, because if ever an author needed the hug of reader adoration, it is this one. But I found it a choppy, difficult book to read, with missing context and odd juxtapositioning of events. I also didn't find much of the author's humor funny. Most of all, I wanted to deck everyone in his narrow minded, homophobic hometown. And finally I wanted to know how Betty herself ended -- the book stopped with her in the midst of a serious health threat. Basically this memoir needed more content and less amusing little accounts of disconnected events, because the underlying story of a gay man growing up and returning to a deeply conservative and intolerant environment is a compelling and often heart wrenching one.
sweddy65's review
5.0
This isn't my story, it can't be my story, and yet it resonates with my story. Anyone who grew up queer in a small town will recognize some of George Hodgman's story.
His parents were contemporaries with my parents and many of George and Betty's silences are familiar to me. "Gradually, we came to a truce, negotiated by distance, time part, loyalties, and love. Silence was a condition, unnamed but ever present, or maybe just an inevitable result. There would be no instructions, no questions, no inquiries about circumstances, details, people I might have cherished, or been hurt by, or loved." This is similar to what I tell people (less elegantly) about my relationship to family and home if they ask.
I loved how he described his love for his parents, even in the midst of the silence and the hurt and the hard work of caring for his mother in her last days.
His parents were contemporaries with my parents and many of George and Betty's silences are familiar to me. "Gradually, we came to a truce, negotiated by distance, time part, loyalties, and love. Silence was a condition, unnamed but ever present, or maybe just an inevitable result. There would be no instructions, no questions, no inquiries about circumstances, details, people I might have cherished, or been hurt by, or loved." This is similar to what I tell people (less elegantly) about my relationship to family and home if they ask.
I loved how he described his love for his parents, even in the midst of the silence and the hurt and the hard work of caring for his mother in her last days.
12roxy's review
4.0
Small towns, big city, not fitting in anywhere.
Kindness, hypocrisy.
Sincere. Wry. Sad.
Your not as funny as you think you are.
My mother has sometimes lived her life for the neighbors. I have never been able to remember the neighbors' names.
Angels are hoped for.
Her face in the pane is like streaks of a watercolor. Even though she is old, I think she is more beautiful than ever, softer.
Do you think it's too warm for the heated seats?
The sky is our sea here.
My skin is sometimes the most uncomfortable garment of all.
weak coffee "troubled water" ...in demitasse cups
Gooseberry jelly. Pimento cheese. Baked oysters.
picture-book beauty
Saipan
It seems to suggest that I am personally responsible for every particle of bullshit loose in the world.
...where it is normal to work 24/7...for someone who will fire you in an instant, but crazy to pause to help someone you love who is falling.
I like the idea of being the only one awake for miles and miles.
A good day is when everyone is alive.
Shame is inventive.
...I cannot summon myself when I most want to...emotionally unavailable/temporarily out of stock
You're high maintenance...he was right. I take a village.
He is young and full of life--attributes I'm not normally crazy about
My mother's hair life has always been complex.
Everything is an invasion. There is nothing that doesn't press too hard, or seem too tight, or feel uncomfortable.
Where do the hidden things go? Not away. Nothing goes away.
...the cost of long-lasting silences
A joke, you see, can earn a place for anyone.
The thing about being a watcher is this: You are never really a part of things...
None of us knew how not to hurt one another.
Kindness may be the most difficult of virtues, but when I have encountered it, it has meant everything to me.
She touched everything gently, including me.
...when you have a secret, you think the world is watching your every move, trying to discover it, and that changes everything...You feel better alone.
...I flee at the slightest suggestion I am unwanted.
I will pray for you...Pray for yourself.
At no time, in my memory, have Midwestern Protestants been the flavor du jour.
...his hands...always acquired whatever they reached for.
...Lulu and her analyst had planned to discuss her feelings about cheese.
My silent old man.
There is almost no truth better not known. The harder ones are tolerated more comfortably when shared.
I had thought of churches as places of kindness, but if you're on the outside looking in, if only part of you is accepted, so much is different.
What has become of kindness?
I looked more and more like my father.
People forced to live by conventions are always the first to enforce them.
Her kindness made me feel okay.
"I feel ashamed and scared." I told the truth. It was the strangest thing to not try to cover it up.
You spend your whole life revealing very little to anyone.
Someone had to have made her boy turn out wrong.
...sadness that finally connects you to everything you are feeling.
...I feel better, more at home in the world.
...and kindness is everything.
The imposition of structure to any story, I have discovered, alters realities...Other travelers may have their own stories, thoughts, interpretations. My greatest wish is to hurt no one, though I believe we are often the most triumphant when revealed at our most human.
Kindness, hypocrisy.
Sincere. Wry. Sad.
Your not as funny as you think you are.
My mother has sometimes lived her life for the neighbors. I have never been able to remember the neighbors' names.
Angels are hoped for.
Her face in the pane is like streaks of a watercolor. Even though she is old, I think she is more beautiful than ever, softer.
Do you think it's too warm for the heated seats?
The sky is our sea here.
My skin is sometimes the most uncomfortable garment of all.
weak coffee "troubled water" ...in demitasse cups
Gooseberry jelly. Pimento cheese. Baked oysters.
picture-book beauty
Saipan
It seems to suggest that I am personally responsible for every particle of bullshit loose in the world.
...where it is normal to work 24/7...for someone who will fire you in an instant, but crazy to pause to help someone you love who is falling.
I like the idea of being the only one awake for miles and miles.
A good day is when everyone is alive.
Shame is inventive.
...I cannot summon myself when I most want to...emotionally unavailable/temporarily out of stock
You're high maintenance...he was right. I take a village.
He is young and full of life--attributes I'm not normally crazy about
My mother's hair life has always been complex.
Everything is an invasion. There is nothing that doesn't press too hard, or seem too tight, or feel uncomfortable.
Where do the hidden things go? Not away. Nothing goes away.
...the cost of long-lasting silences
A joke, you see, can earn a place for anyone.
The thing about being a watcher is this: You are never really a part of things...
None of us knew how not to hurt one another.
Kindness may be the most difficult of virtues, but when I have encountered it, it has meant everything to me.
She touched everything gently, including me.
...when you have a secret, you think the world is watching your every move, trying to discover it, and that changes everything...You feel better alone.
...I flee at the slightest suggestion I am unwanted.
I will pray for you...Pray for yourself.
At no time, in my memory, have Midwestern Protestants been the flavor du jour.
...his hands...always acquired whatever they reached for.
...Lulu and her analyst had planned to discuss her feelings about cheese.
My silent old man.
There is almost no truth better not known. The harder ones are tolerated more comfortably when shared.
I had thought of churches as places of kindness, but if you're on the outside looking in, if only part of you is accepted, so much is different.
What has become of kindness?
I looked more and more like my father.
People forced to live by conventions are always the first to enforce them.
Her kindness made me feel okay.
"I feel ashamed and scared." I told the truth. It was the strangest thing to not try to cover it up.
You spend your whole life revealing very little to anyone.
Someone had to have made her boy turn out wrong.
...sadness that finally connects you to everything you are feeling.
...I feel better, more at home in the world.
...and kindness is everything.
The imposition of structure to any story, I have discovered, alters realities...Other travelers may have their own stories, thoughts, interpretations. My greatest wish is to hurt no one, though I believe we are often the most triumphant when revealed at our most human.
k8iedid's review
A story of empathy, of putting your life on pause to care for someone who never got your whole story, your whole truth.
melodyrose's review
4.0
At first i wanted more. Then the last half of he book made up for the initial half. Enjoyed learning more and more about George and Betty and then about how he felt about it. It was like meeting someone in real life. You don’t get all the details at first-it takes some time.
pattieod's review
5.0
After moving into my own childhood home to take care of my elderly dad after the death of my mom, I thought I might write a book about the experience. But after reading George Hodgman's "Bettyville" I realized that book had already been written, and written more deeply and beautifully than I am capable of doing.
Hodgman writes about his lovely and eccentric mom, his extended family, the dying town where he grew up, and squeezes in the difficulty of being gay in small town Midwestern America. Funny and sad at the same time, anyone facing their parents' mortality will enjoy sharing the journey with Hodgman.
Hodgman writes about his lovely and eccentric mom, his extended family, the dying town where he grew up, and squeezes in the difficulty of being gay in small town Midwestern America. Funny and sad at the same time, anyone facing their parents' mortality will enjoy sharing the journey with Hodgman.