A review by sweddy65
Bettyville: A Memoir by George Hodgman
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.