Book Review: We Bought A Zoo by Benjamin Mee

Just a few short years ago, Benjamin Mee, a British journalist, was writing home repair columns for The Guardian and living a quiet rural life with his beautiful wife and two kids. So, of course, the next logical step anyone in this position would take would obviously be to…buy a zoo. Which is exactly what Benjamin Mee did.

In the hokily-titled We Bought A Zoo, Mee chronicles the adventures of his family as they negotiate, purchase, and revitalize a brokedown zoo in the English countryside. The story is certainly interesting enough, even if the points of the book’s subtitle – The Amazing True Story of a Young Family, a Broken Down Zoo, and the 200 Wild Animals That Change Their Lives Forever — aren’t fleshed out very successfully. Mee focuses his pen more upon the A Broken Down Zoo part, slightly less on the The Amazing True Story of a Young Family part, and, regrettably, even fewer pages on The 200 Wild Animals.

This kinda sucks because the wild animals were the original reason I was drawn to this book. Instead of having a tiger roaring gorgeously on the book’s cover, it would have been appropriate to have, say, a jackhammer jackhammering away at a slab of concrete, or a steamroller steamrolling a walkway. With the material for such a fantastic story at his fingertips, I was a little flabbergasted that Mee chose instead to illustrate, in often endless detail, the infrastructure problems of the zoo itself, or the icky-poo blankets of grease that covered the zoo restaurant. Like a bratty kid on a long car trip to the zoo, I kept whining, “When are we gonna get to the wild animals?”. There are plenty of stories about anesthtitizing big beasts to relocate them or get them medical care, but even these are done more as a chronicle of the zoo’s renovation than captivating peeks into the lives of wild animals. Sadly, apart from some quick references to a tapir that I would love to meet, and some really, really stupid peacocks, The 200 Wild Animals take a backseat to the bigger concerns of working loos and where to put the pasties stand.

Which brings me to the language. I consider myself well-read and well-traveled, but I struggled in several areas of this book to interpret what Mee was saying. Not because it’s badly written, but because it’s so British. A huge number of references and slang terms in the book were completely lost on me. I kept wishing for an English-to-English dictionary to help me out. I’ve also never in my life seen the word “myriad” used so many times in the course of one book. And there are way too many words in We Bought A Zoo as it is. Mee has a penchant for describing in finite detail some of the most useless and uninteresting information, and even with the useful and interesting, he still goes on for way too long. All in all, the book could stand to lose about 75 pages and still get its point across beautifully.

We Bought A Zoo is not a failure, though. Not by any means. Mee raises some important and enlightened issues about zoos, conservation, and animal husbandry (including a fascinating riff on homosexuality in animals). He also creates a memorable and unique cast of characters, including his 76-year-old mother, who decides to chuck it all and go in with her son on buying the zoo. Mee’s respect and adoration for her is palpable, and he paints his mum as a loving eccentric with a no-nonsense zest for life.

But the most moving aspects of the book come out of a series of events that no one — least of all Benjamin Mee — saw coming. Just after arriving at the zoo, Mee’s wife, Katherine, learns she has a brain tumor and, within a few months, passes away. He gives us a brave, abbreviated glimpse into what it was like during those months, dealing with the zoo — this new project that was now vastly less important — and nursing his young wife through her final days. Mee’s descriptions are full of love and admiration and are more than a little heartbreaking. But he does something truly classy here: he doesn’t turn We Bought A Zoo into a memoir of grief. Katherine’s death plays a big role in the book, obviously, but instead of going on for pages about his agony and loss, he uses it as an impetus to refocus on the work at hand: the work of the zoo. We see how his grief shapes his vision for this project, and he leaves the nakedly personal to himself. He also, very commendably, gives only a slight mention of his childrens’ reactions to their mother’s death. There’s no advertising of bereavement here; Mee and his kids work through their loss outside the pages of We Bought A Zoo. We know quite clearly what everyone is feeling and living through without a word being written about it; this is the mark of a truly good writer.

I only wish Mee included more of the — well, more of the zoo in We Bought A Zoo.  Grade C

 

Title  We Bought A Zoo: The Amazing True Story of a Young Family, a Broken Down Zoo, and the 200 Wild Animals That Change Their Lives Forever

Author  Benjamin Mee

Publisher  Weinstein Books

Year Published  2008

ISBN  1602860483

Snarkbytes  The story told in We Bought A Zoo was the subject of a popular BBC documentary entitled Ben’s Zoo.

September 29, 2008 | Filed Under Biography & Memoir | 13 Comments 

Book Review: A Wolf at the Table by Augusten Burroughs

Wherever Augusten Burroughs wants to take me, I am willing to go.

I am a die-hard fan of the 42-year-old writer, best known for his raucous, endearing memoir Running With Scissors. Scissors examined, with great sensitivity and acerbic wit, his adolescence spent in the bizarre home of his mother’s psychiatrist, where she pretty much abandoned him as a teenager. The book was terrifically successful, inspired a feature film of the same name, and put Burroughs on the literary map. And though I certainly enjoyed Scissors, it was his next book, 2003’s Dry, that really knocked me on my keister. Employing his usual humor and depth of feeling, Dry is a recounting of Burroughs’s chemical dependence and recovery and is one of the few books I’ve read that almost identically mirrors my personal experiences (we even went to the same rehab!). Dry could have easily been my own autobiography.

It is for these reasons that I trust Augusten Burroughs implicitly. If I had a literary kindred spirit, he’d probably be it. The places he needs to go, I’ve discovered, are also the places I need to go. Though the great majority of our life experiences couldn’t be more different, Burroughs’s brave examination of the few we do share is enough to give me the courage to look at my own life. It is a process. It is often slow. And it’s comforting to know that when we undertake such a process, we may be lucky enough to have a fearless writer who has tread the path before us. The great poet Theodore Roethke wrote, “This shaking keeps me steady. I should know./What falls away is always. And is near./I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow./I learn by going where I have to go.”

Yet even after all of this, I was not prepared for where Augusten Burroughs took me in his latest book, A Wolf at the Table: A Memoir of My Father. Forgoing his trademark quirky humor and uncanny knack for making the downright weird completely entertaining, Burroughs undertakes a harrowing, heartbreaking dissection of his inaccessible father and the impact such a figure had on a young, impressionable boy.

Now, anyone who knows me realizes that I have a bit of a flirtation with the dark side. I enjoy a lot of books, movies, and music that some might label “depressing”. I’m not afraid of human emotion, or, more specifically, bleak human emotion. But I have to admit that A Wolf at the Table is probably the saddest book I’ve ever read. My chest constricted, my stomach in knots, a lump lodged in my throat, my heart simply cracked more and more with each turn of the page.

But none of this - not one word - is written for shock value or sensationalist entertainment. While Burroughs is courageously retelling the story of his childhood, he is simultaneously (and equally courageously) piecing together what it all means. What it did both for and to him. How it shaped, defined, and destroyed various aspects of his being. You’ll find no psychobabble or Freudian theory here. What you will find is a very human story. And what may at first seem devastating and crushing ultimately ends up surprisingly inspiring: the truth, which we all know is oftentimes a painful path to forge, really can set us free. This book is an important one, even for those of us who had good dads (and I have a great one), if for no other reason than to make us appreciate what we were lucky enough to have. Some weren’t so fortunate.

A Wolf at the Table takes place in the pre-Running With Scissors years, when Augusten was a young boy living with his parents and peculiarly-absent older brother. His father, a bitter, violent alcoholic who often spilled over into the realm of the sociopathic, was a dark presence of immeasurable terror to the whole family. Yet he was consistently more so to Augusten, who he really never had time for. From the boy dressing up like the family dog (whom his father always had time for) in order to get his dad’s attention, to trying to decipher exactly what his dad is doing hovering over his bed in the dark, to attempting to find a father figure amongst a group of construction workers who come to work on their house, it’s amazing that the young Burroughs survived such a sad and terrorized upbringing at all. And it gets far worse before it gets better. After his father kills his beloved guinea pig (the scene where Augusten discovers this is one I will never, ever forget), the boy effectively turns on his dad, and so begins an explosive, enraged, emotional tug-of-war between the two. Tragically, even on his father’s deathbed, it still rages.

While A Wolf at the Table is a departure from the typical Burroughs wit, it is also a mature, terrifying, and totally haunting story. If you’re expecting Running With Scissors II, you’ll be sorely disappointed. But if you’re interested in going where you need to go, then there is no better guide than Augusten Burroughs. Grade: B+

Book Title A Wolf at the Table: A Memoir of My Father

Author Augusten Burroughs

Publisher St. Martin’s Press

Year Published 2008

ISBN 0312342020

Snarkbytes An excerpt from A Wolf at the Table: “As a little boy, I had a dream that my father had taken me to the woods where there was a dead body. He buried it and told me I must never tell. It was the only thing we’d ever done together as father and son, and I promised not to tell. But unlike most dreams, the memory of this one never left me. And sometimes…I wasn’t altogether sure about one thing: was it just a dream?”

August 23, 2008 | Filed Under Biography & Memoir | 7 Comments 

Book Review: 90 Minutes in Heaven by Don Piper

A more appropriate title for this review would be “Holy Shit”, but I at least have couth enough not to write an offensive title that would emblazon a curse word at the top of my web page. I can, however, write a damned offensive review. And so I shall.

Let me begin by saying that 90 Minutes in Heaven is not a book I would normally read. At my former job, the employees started a monthly book club, and this particular book was the pick for the inaugural meeting. I borrowed a copy from a colleague, and thank Jebus I did. I would’ve been supremely pissed off had I laid down a single cent for this pious turd of a book.

Actually, even calling it a book is being generous. The word “book” implies certain standards. Books offer new ideas, new experiences, new adventures. Books make us think about the larger, more vital questions of this life. Books make us feel less lonely. Books are entertaining.

90 Minutes in Heaven has none of these. It’s more a long-winded pamphlet of Christian cliches and ideologies, masked in the guise of a preacher’s journey from a soul-saving, gospel-spreading Man of God to, well, a soul-saving, gospel-spreading Man of God.

Let me explain.

The author of this potato (let’s just call it a potato, since it’s clearly not a book) is a minister named Don Piper. In 1989, he was in an awful car accident, in which he was hit head-on and his vehicle was pretty much flattened. In this accident, Don Piper died. For ninety minutes, anyway.

Now this is where it gets tricky. A 205-page potato that boasts a title, cover and description declaring the author’s real, one-of-a-kind visit to the real, one-of-a-kind heaven, only contains fifteen pages actually about heaven. The rest of the story consists of the details of Piper’s recovery.

At this point in my reading, I was still more than willing to give it a chance. My partner was also in a terrible car accident many years ago, and his recovery process was long and arduous (and in some ways, still continues to this day). I thought Piper’s experience, while not giving me the secrets of heaven as promised, would hopefully give me some insight into what my partner went through.

But ah, ain’t wishful thinking grand? Because while it is true that the author goes into detail about the physical ramifications of the collision, he really says very little about the emotional or spiritual ones (outside of the typical platitudes and bumper-sticker-speak). And there is good reason for this: Don Piper is not a writer. He’s simply not, there’s no kind way to put it. Yet I gotta give Don a little credit, because he had sense enough to hire a co-author, Cecil Murphey, to write his story. I’m assuming he put it on paper with Murphey’s collaboration and guidance. Maybe I’m wrong, but isn’t this what a co-author is supposed to do?

Maybe Mr. Murphey called in sick on the day Piper decided to write the potato. Not only does it feel like it was written in a day, but there seems to have been no editing process involved whatsoever. The story lacks any real depth or discovery, which is truly tragic since this horrible experience could’ve served as a catalyst for some mighty, benevolent change in Don Piper’s world. And possibly even the worlds of other crash survivors.

Let’s visit those few pages that actually take place in heaven. First of all, the entire description of Piper’s heaven can be summed up in two words: “It’s indescribable.” He makes it a point to say this, repeatedly and ad nauseam, throughout the two chapters devoted to the celestial resting place in the sky. Everything, from the sights to the emotions to the music, is just not describable. This bothered me a lot. Piper clearly shouldn’t have written a book/root vegetable if he couldn’t put words to an experience. Because that’s what a book is.

The few bones he does toss us are positively trite. Pearly gates, streets paved with gold, choirs of angels. My first thought when I read these things was Damn, heaven sounds boring as hell.

As I mentioned, the remaining 190 pages chronicle Piper’s recovery after he was inexplicably brought back to life by another minister, who just happened to be driving by. This second minister squeezed into the mangled car and prayed all over Piper till he woke. These pages are as equally uninteresting and uninspiring as the few that take place in heaven. In writing his story, Piper has managed to do something that is indeed miraculous: he has left out the story itself. There are no dramatic arcs, there’s no coherent progression, and this hero we are rooting for undergoes no important spiritual or emotional changes.

The hero’s journey can be broken down like this:
1. Car accident. Bad.
2. Dies for ninety minutes. Goes to heaven. Indescribable.
3. Brought back to life; undergoes torturous recovery. Bad.
4. Continues with the same job, same life, same beliefs, same views held pre-accident. Good.

The other players in this drama, namely Piper’s wife, kids, and colleagues, play virtually no role in this retelling of events. In fact, I was a little offended by the author’s portrayal of his wife. Not only is she almost nonexistent, but what little he does say about her paints her as an irrelevant and incompetent “helpmate”. He even goes so far as to point out her inability to handle those oh-so-manly things like finances, writing checks and paying bills. This poor woman suffered just as much as he did with this accident, and she deserves better. Though Piper does claim that his pre-accident attitudes toward his wife evolved into something softer and more respectful, there’s little evidence in these pages to support that idea.

There was, though, one character and one instance that I found truly touching. After Piper has returned home to convalesce, his mother comes to take care of him when his wife steps away for a breather at Bible camp. He is embarrassed by his bed-ridden state and the fact that he has to use a bedpan. But his mother is unfazed: she falls into her role with delicate ease and nurses her son with no judgment and no discomfort. It’s really a beautiful scene, and I wish it hadn’t been relegated to a couple of paragraphs. This story — the man who has spent his life saving and caring for others is forced to be saved and cared for by the only person who really can: his mother — should have been the focus of the book. It would’ve made a far better story.

In the last chapter of the book, Piper does something I found profoundly distasteful and a furthering of the stereotypes that all Christians are out to save our souls and preach that their way is the only way. The author dismisses claims of other people’s near-death experiences. He doesn’t mention any names, but he points out some other folks who had NDEs and wrote books about their experiences. And then proceeds to blow them off with an arrogant attitude of, in so many words, “MY experience is the only REAL experience”.

I am not discounting, judging, or making light of the experience through which Don Piper lived. Trauma, brain injury, the boulder-strewn path of recovery…I live with these things every day. Nor am I questioning his claims of a heavenly visit; I find it relatively easy to take a leap of faith, think nonlinearly, and consider different possibilities when it comes to life and death. What I am questioning is the presentation of Piper’s experience as it is in 90 Minutes in Heaven, which pretty much craps on what was obviously a life-changing moment. Several times throughout this book, I thought, “Wow, this would make a great book!”.

Too bad he already tried.

And came up with a potato.

Now that you’ve heard me tear this book a new one, I’m tempted to tell you to go read it. It’s like that old SNL skit where one guy smells the sour milk, immediately winces, and says, “Oh that smells awful! Here, SMELL IT!” –and thrusts the carton at the other guy. It can be fun to see just how bad bad writing can be. I kinda want you to experience just how awful this book really is.

It’s…indescribable. Grade: F

Book Title 90 Minutes in Heaven

Author Don Piper

Publisher Revell

Year Published 2004

ISBN 0800759494

Snarkbytes Don Piper now runs his own ministerial empire. The ministries’ website has a page titled “How to Go to Heaven”.

August 23, 2008 | Filed Under Biography & Memoir, Spirituality & Religion | 9 Comments 

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      WHAT IS A SNARK?




      The Snark is a creature created by Lewis Carroll in his poem "The Hunting of the Snark". To give a proper description of Snarks, one must look no further than Carroll himself, who summed them up in one word: Unimaginable.

      But this much we do know: some have feathers, some have whiskers. Snarks sleep a lot, yet they are an ambitious lot -- with very little sense of humor. They love bathing-machines and tend to bring them wherever they go; they are also handy for striking a light. Snarks live on a far-off island, a place filled with chasms and crags, and are constantly on the lookout for Snark-hunters. Their mortal enemies are hope, care, thimbles and forks.

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