Review: "The New York Regional Mormon Singles Halloween Dance: A Memoir", by Elna Baker

Since I last posted, I finished reading The New York Regional Mormon Singles Halloween Dance: A Memoir, by Elna Baker (Dutton, 2009; 276 pages).

It is not a bad book, really. As I wrote before, it's a little too chick-lit for me. Still, Baker's story of living in New York City as a twenty-something practicing Mormon had its moments. Some of those moments were triumphant, such as when she had finally had enough of a holier-than-thou woman in a church group who said one mean thing to many to Baker's sister and instinctively launched a piece of fruit (a tangerine, if I recall correctly) at the woman, hitting her right between the eyes with it. Does that sound mean? Well, judging by Baker's description of the woman's behavior, she richly deserved it.

Other moments were cringingly hilarous, such as the Halloween when Baker attened the annual dance referred to in the book's title dressed as a fortune cookie. The only problem was that on the subway trip to the dance, bits of the costume rearranged themselves into something that looked more like a portion of the female anatomy that just should not be seen in public, much less at a church dance. Other moments were heartbreaking, including the episode in which Baker thought she had finally met the Mormon man of her dreams and moved to Utah to marry him, only to have him break it off with her a week after she arrived.

Some things in the book made me uncomfortable, such as Baker's account of her struggles with her weight, which included going to a medical weight control clinic which encouraged, or at least did nothing to discourage her from, losing forty pounds in seven and a half weeks. That is much too fast and too unhealthy a way to lose that much weight no matter how heavy an individual is. And indeed, after she gained some of the weight back, she obtained the drug she had used under the doctor's care from an internet site to lose the weight again and instead ended up in the hospital.

My feeling is that Baker spent much to much time describing her pursuit of men to kiss. Which, being a good Mormon girl, was about all she could do and maintain the standards of her religion. Although, she did describe an encounter she once had with a French man who asked her what she could do with her body as a praciticing Mormon. The discussion with him on the topic led to her conclusion that she could do anything she wanted to with her armpit. Baker also tells the story of how she walked away from an encounter with an older, apparently very well-known and very married actor with most of her virtue intact.

Throught the book, Baker chronicles her ambivalence about her religion. Raised a Mormon, but in a non-Utah and fairly liberal family, Baker questioned her religion from a very young age. As a former Mormon myself, I know that just that alone, the asking of questions, very often marks one as an outcast within the religion. Yet, despite her questions, Baker remains in the religion, only near the end of the book announcing to a non-Moromon man she had once had a relationship with, that she was no longer Mormon in an attempt to rekindle their relationship. And, even then, by the last pages, it still isn't clear whether Baker really does consider herself a practicing Mormon or not.

I do have to complement Baker for explaining the parts of the Mormon religion she discusses accurately and without sensationalizing it, and without being defensive about the church's beliefs, even when her feelings about them were ambivalent. It is difficult to do that when discussing any religion and, from my experience, it is even more difficult to do that when writing about Mormonism. Her explanations of the parts of the church and its beliefs which she wrote about were clear and easily accessible.

The New York Regional Mormon Singles Halloween Dance is probably not a book I will re-read. It isn't a great book. But it is a good book, especially for those who are interested in reading memoirs which present a way of life and a point of view that isn't often presented in this personal sort of way.

Just finished and currently reading...

Recnetly finished:

Spider Bones, by Kathy Reichs (Scribner, 2010), 306 pages. This is the latest in the series of Temperance Brennan novels by Reichs, and it isn't the best of the series, but it kept me turning the pages and I definitely didn't see the resoslution of thhe mystery coming.

If you've been avoiding these books becuase you don't like the Fox television series Bones, which is based on these books, don't let that stop you from reading. About the only things the books share with the television series are the name of the main character and her occupation as a forensic anthropologist. I love the books, and I like the series very much, but they are two different things altogether.

My Life Among the Serial Killers: Inside the Minds of the World's Most Notorious Murderers, by Helen Morrison, M.D. and Harold Goldberg (William Morrow, 2004), 276 pages. Don't read this book if you're squeamish. Really. It is non-fiction by a psychiatrist (Morrison) who has interviewed pretty much every serial murderer you've heard of - more than eighty of them, she claims.

There were things about this book that irritated me, such as the fact that Dr. Morrison seems to have a bit of a persecution complex of her own as a woman who started practicing psychiatry in the 1970s, when there weren't that many women in the field and those who were there weren't taken very seriously. It isn' that her complaints don't have merit. I'm sure it was a rough row to hoe, especially as she started having to deal with the law enforcement and legal communities when she began her studies of serial killers. The problem with the book is, she tends to stop in the middle of a story to air her issues on the subject in a way that interrupts the flow of the information she is trying to explain.

Dr. Morrison theorizes in the book that serial killers are born, not made, an idea that contradicts current paradigms on the subject, and from the quick bit of research I did after reading the book her opinions and her book have come in for a certain amount of criticism from her peers. Still, especially if you are interested in the subject of serial killers, it is a book worth reading. I'll probably be writing more about it soon. Finished reading: 29 December 2010.

Currently reading (for a complete change of pace):

The New York Regional Mormon Singles Halloween Dance: A Memoir, by Elna Baker (Dutton, 2009), 276 pages. I'm over halfway through this one, and I'm still not at all sure about it. It may well be a little too chick-litish for me. On the other hand, Baker writes from a fresh perspective. And she's funny, altoughh some of the stories she tells might not be quite as funny as she thinks they are.