THE MIGHTY QUEEN OF FREEVILLE by AMY DICKINSON

THE MIGHTY QUEEN OF FREEVILLE by AMY DICKINSON
A Mother, a Daughter, and the Town That Raised Them
Hyperion. 240 pp. $22.99

Juliet Wittman, a book review for The Washington Post.

Amy Dickinson took over Ann Landers's syndicated advice column in 2003. In "The Mighty Queens of Freeville," she comes across very much as you'd expect an advice columnist to: smart, humorous, common-sensical, not prone to deep self-analysis and -- despite having lived in London and Chicago and worked in New York as a television producer -- a passionate proponent of small-town American values. Billed as a memoir, "The Mighty Queens" reads more like a collection of essays, something with which to pass the time while you're waiting at the airport. The book hits all the right contemporary women's-lit buttons, from the title, which immediately tells you you're in Sisters of the Traveling Pants territory, to the wry, bright writing style, to the cast of characters in Dickinson's family. They may suffer from an unusually high divorce rate, but they're terrific at sharing communal pancake breakfasts and being there for each other. No one is described in much detail. Daughter Emily, no doubt well on her way to Mighty Queenhood herself, doesn't get a lot of ink. Nor does the affluent, spoiled husband whom Dickinson followed to London and eventually divorced, though you can't help finding him rather interesting. The narrative skims lightly over a lot that you'd like to hear more about: Dickinson's childhood "on a failed dairy farm in rural poverty of the ugly, muddy sort," for example. And the beloved cow, Shirley, who ended up in pieces in the freezer. There's probably a very good story somewhere beneath the swift, chatty surface of Dickinson's prose, and perhaps someday she'll tell it.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/06/AR2009030602015.html