The Book Lady’s Blog

Available in paperback from Hachette; audio book read by Susan Denaker

When I asked for audio book recommendations a few weeks ago, several of you suggested that memoirs work well on audio, and Dawn recommended Susan Jane Gilman’s newer memoir Undress Me in the Temple of Heaven, which sounds great….but since I like to read authors’ memoirs in order, I decided to start with this one.

Hypocrite in a Pouffy White Dress: Tales of Growing Up Groovy and Clueless chronicles author Susan Jane Gilman’s childhood, adolescence, and young adult life as the daughter of liberal, hippie Jewish New Yorkers. From being forced to practice transcendental meditation and live through her mother’s one-after-the-next fleeting obsessions with everything from alternative religions to macrobiotic cooking (which she likens to an alternative religion), Gilman’s childhood was chock full of hilarious adventures, and her rendering of them brings across great humor, warmth, and even a few touching moments.

The middle section of the book—dedicated to adolescence, hormones, and horniness—contained several laugh-out-loud moments and was my favorite part. Whether Gilman is discussing the sudden discovery that she had grown boobs, or her deep love of making out, or the time she had dinner with Mick Jagger, or losing her virginity, she is thoughtful and funny, and her tales will resonate with anyone who has ever been a teenage girl. And the part where she and a college friend decide to take a spur-of-the-moment road trip to North Carolina to visit their romantic partners—driving almost 20 hours just to get laid—and then both get dumped on arrival is just priceless.

Carrying the same sense of humor into young adulthood, Gilman recounts the beginning of her journalism career (during which she worked for a Jewish newspaper read primarily by little old ladies), her brief stint as a “professional lesbian,” and her first job on Capitol Hill, working for a representative who hired her best friends (who happened to be lovers) to run the office and terrorize the assistants.

But Gilman isn’t all fun and games.  In a very poignant chapter, she recalls a trip to Holocaust sites in Poland that made her feel more connected to her heritage than ever before. As she struggles through dating and planning a wedding, she addresses gender roles, feminism, and the tricky work of negotiating relationships in modern society. And as a  liberal Jewish woman, she explores the difficulty of reconciling one’s progressive political ideals with one’s traditional background.

Also, there’s a great part where Gilman recalls being in elementary school (fourth grade, maybe?) and being asked by some of the popular girls whether she was a virgin. Not knowing what the word meant, Gilman said, “No, of course not,” and that, of course, did not end well. For most people, that’s probably just another piece of this wonderfully fun memoir….but for me, it was an all-too-true story, and I felt so validated, at the ripe old age of 26, to FINALLY hear from someone else who made the same semantic mistake as a child. I mean, what business do fourth graders really have knowing what a virgin is?

All in all, I enjoyed listening to Hypocrite in a Pouffy White Dress and thought narrator Susan Denaker did a very nice job of relaying Gilman’s stories and portraying the characters therein. This was a great fit for me in terms of listening material because it was interesting enough to keep my attention without being distracting, and it wasn’t too heavy. I’m not sure I would have enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed listening to it, so I’ll go with 3.5 out of 5.