Much To Your Chagrin

Silicon Valley Moms Book Club:
Much to Your Chagrin, A Memoir of Embarrassment

We've all be embarrassed a time or two, or maybe even three.  Sweat stains, asking strangers for Tampons, baby-diaper explosions that render your clothes unwearable just as you are about to board an airplane for a three-hour trip.  It happens. To us all.

Who doesn't recall saying the wrong thing on a first date, telling a joke that others found offensive or repeating something just ONE TOO MANY TIMES. 

Confessions are *IN* now that Suzanne Guillette has declared some her best gaffes.  Of course, there was the time in the seventh grade,the absolute pinnacle of self-loathing, geeky awkwardness back when my mother told me tampons were reserved for those "having intercourse and I was not to go doing that at the age of 13" (Gee, thanks Mom, it was totally THAT conversation that made me wait another FOUR AND A HALF YEARS, not my own CHOICES and BETTER JUDGMENT.) when for the second time THAT WEEK a stupid effing maxi pad LEAKED and I had the dreaded SPOT ON THE ASS. 

I have successfully repressed my most embarrassing stories which is more than I can say for Suzanne Guillette who filled her first novel, Much to Your Chagrin, A Memoir of Embarrassment with her own moments of Oops! and Oh, Shit!, and DOH!  She recovers well from those moments which is more than I can say for myself.  

Written in the second person, (ie: "You wake up and find yourself alone. You are hungry.") is perhaps the best suited for this kind of put-yourself-in-my-place type memoir but it takes the reader a few chapters to get used to the choppiness and reverse references.  Overall, it doesn't effect the story line much.

Click here to see what the other SV Moms are saying about Chagrin:

Comments

[Suzanne]

Thanks for your post! I agree that embarrassing gaffes are all too common--and certainly a part of being alive. But then, the instinct to hide other sorts of things--ie failed romances and other regrets--is, too, very human. Thanks for reading.