She Got Up Off the Couch

And Other Heroic Acts from Mooreland, Indiana

 
4.5 based on 63 reviews.

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Paperback Book, 336 pages

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Product Description

After twenty years of burrowing into the corner of the family couch, eating junk food, and reading science fiction, Indiana mother Delonda Jarvis did something that shocked her family: she went to college. Or, as her younger daughter, Haven Kimmel, writes, she "stood up, brushed away the pork rind crumbs, and escaped by the skin of her teeth."

Despite having no money, no car, and a resentful husband, Delonda managed to obtain a master's degree in English. The former teenage bride also dropped one hundred pounds, learned how to drive, and became a breadwinner. But as she reclaimed herself, her marriage disintegrated.

Product Details

  • Subtitle: And Other Heroic Acts from Mooreland, Indiana
  • Media: Paperback Book, 336 pages
  • Publisher: Free Press (February 13, 2007)
  • ISBN-10: 074328500X
  • ISBN-13: 9780743285001
  • Dimensions: 5.4 x 8.3 x 1.2 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 0.35 lbs
  • Note: Some of this information came from Amazon.com

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Customer Reviews

  • Rating Blew Me Away!  Feb 3, 2006 (22 of 22 found this helpful)

    Haven Kimmel's latest memoir installment is even better than the first ("A Girl Named Zippy") if that's possible to imagine. "She Got Up Off the Couch" is deeper, more interesting and funnier! Watch how she gradually reveals some of the truths of her young life. This deft unveiling technique works perfectly to paint a more sympathetic picture of her family than if she had merely started out stating some of the "facts" about her early life. Thanks to her perfect pacing, we as readers grow in affection for her mother, father and sister before we know some things that otherwise may have made us judge them harshly. Clearly Zippy does not want us to judge them harshly and her superb talent gives us, and her family, this wonderful gift.

    No higher praise can I give than to also note that young Zippy has echoes of Scout Finch throughout the narrative. I hated to reach the last page.

    If you haven't read "The Solace of Leaving Early", Haven Kimmel's first novel, you will want to do so now. It's has one of the most deliciously irritating protagonists I have ever had the pleasure to meet between the pages of a novel. In fact, I'm going to go re-read it (again) because just writing this makes me recall it's splendor!

  • Rating Zippy II...Even better than Zippy...  Dec 22, 2005 (9 of 9 found this helpful)

    Three years ago I accidentally read "A Girl Named Zippy." It's not a book I would have thought to read, you know; the memoirs of a woman's young childhood. My daughter had received the book as a Christmas gift. With nothing better to do one day while sitting in the car as my daughter and her friend were sledding, I picked it up off the car seat and read. After we got home, I couldn't stop reading it, anxious to see what happened next, and read it straight through `til finishing in the wee hours of the morning. Only the aching for another chapter... or two... or another book marred its excellence, `cause Zippy ends with her about 9 or 10 years old. I was excited to hear the continuation was released; I got a couple copies for gifts overnight, and read from the noon UPS delivery until 4 am. There's still plenty of the endearing wacky kid in this book ("I had taken to sucking on gravel, which didn't go over well with my sister... Sometimes I washed it off with the hose, and sometimes I just rubbed it on my shirt. I'd get it in there, move it around. Pea gravel makes a lot of noise in a mouth. It tasted exactly like rock."). But along with stories of her brother, her sister, her friends, and especially her less than stellar dad, half the book is about the improbable Phoenix-like rise of her downtrodden mother who gets her life back on the track delayed two decades by a husband content to let his family live in poverty. Her fascination with her mother's journey and transformation leads her to take every opportunity she can to vicariously share it. I grew up, in nearly the same period, in two of the surrounding towns that played big parts in this story, so there's a nostalgic angle for my enjoyment, but I can't imagine anyone not loving this book, especially if they read Zippy first.

  • Rating I LOVED this book!!!  Mar 14, 2006 (8 of 8 found this helpful)

    I honestly didn't think that A Girl Named Zippy could be topped, but Haven Kimmel has done it again. The woman is amazingly talented! While the first book was innocent and exuberant, this one was more thought provoking and poignant as Zippy grows into an adolescent young woman with so many thoughts and feelings swirling within. Don't get me wrong, there is some incredibly funny stuff in this book. There were times when I threw my head back and laughed so hard I could hardly breathe, but it kept me thinking, also. For me, the best chapter was titled "Gold" when she pays homage to her friends. Oh, my goodness! Tears came to my eyes. She absolutely captured the essence of what true friendship is all about and the fact that they all accepted her for who she was despite her family's situation.

    I truly hope that this is only book two of a trilogy. I'm anxious to know what happens to Zippy as she evolves into Haven. I want to know how Delonda copes with her husband leaving the family. I want to know if Melinda ever stops torturing Zippy. I want to know more about Dan and how he reconciles his feelings about his father and his childhood. And I even want to know what eventually happens to Bob Jarvis though a side of him is revealed in this book that isn't as endearing as in the first book. I want to know, dang it!

  • Rating A must read  Mar 8, 2007 (6 of 6 found this helpful)

    Haven Kimmel used "Zippy" to polish her writing skill, this one benefits from that experience. A really good read. Even funnier than "Zippy." Please don't make the mistake I did, however. I assumed because she was such a good writer, her novels would be good as well. I bought them, but they ended in the "round file." Kimmel needs to stay with the people and places she knew. Her fiction is one of those things publishers publish because of the "name." They will sell to people like me because I liked her "experience" books so well. But, sadly, The fiction should have been buried in the back yard.

  • Rating Zippier yet  Aug 2, 2006 (5 of 5 found this helpful)

    A Girl Named Zippy was fun and touching. She Got Off the Couch is funnier and so much richer. Finally the truth about her childhood comes out around the edges, and you learn what you suspected in Zippy, that there was much not right in her world. This is a happier story by several removes than The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls, but it reveals some of that perplexing realization that children do love their parents, no matter what. If we are ever going to fix the world we will need to start with this truth.

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