Spring Break
Book Review: The English American
Meredith Hubbard
Issue date: 4/15/08 Section: Metro Muse
There have been times in most of our lives when we have looked at our family and thought, "how did I ever come from these people?" For the heroine of Alison Larkin's debut novel, this sentiment regularly occurs. However, Pippa Dunn really didn't come from her Scottish-dancing, tea-drinking, boarding school-attending parents, she was adopted.
Pippa is mostly British. She drinks tea the proper way- cream in the cup, then Earl Grey poured in, and perhaps a slice of lemon, she eats Marmite on toast, and she drives a little Renault called Typhoo. She is 28 years old, lives with her sister, and sells ads over the telephone during the day. However, in a very un-British way, she is messy and creative, she writes plays, prefers show tunes to any other music, and she is afraid of committing herself to anything. All of this adds up to her having very little in common with the thoroughly British adoptive family she loves. Thus, it is with trepidation that Pippa begins taking the steps towards finding her birth parents.
"Something deep within me has clicked into place. I fell ready for full life as opposed to half life," Pippa writes after spending a month in America with her birth parents. Everything is golden. Finally, all of her weird quirks are explained. Her mother is messy and artistic; her father is idealistic and outgoing. So, when her mother asks her to move to New York, Pippa jumps at the chance to spend more time in the nation and with the family she is so comfortable with.
However, the American Dream isn't quite what Pippa expected it to be. Her mother is clingy and her father is involved in a political scandal. She finds herself questioning her decisions and rethinking her childhood. Suddenly she realizes that, for better or worse, it is the people who raised her that have had the most impact on her life, reminding us all that we owe more to our parents than we give them credit for.
Following Pippa through her various mishaps on the way to self-discovery is a riotous ride. However, The English American is not just a barrel of laughs; it also serves as a great reminder that, for better or worse, we are what our experiences have made us. In the words of my favorite Greek, Aristotle, "We are what we repeatedly do." So, for these last few weeks of the spring semester, do well and pick up a copy of The English American.
Pippa is mostly British. She drinks tea the proper way- cream in the cup, then Earl Grey poured in, and perhaps a slice of lemon, she eats Marmite on toast, and she drives a little Renault called Typhoo. She is 28 years old, lives with her sister, and sells ads over the telephone during the day. However, in a very un-British way, she is messy and creative, she writes plays, prefers show tunes to any other music, and she is afraid of committing herself to anything. All of this adds up to her having very little in common with the thoroughly British adoptive family she loves. Thus, it is with trepidation that Pippa begins taking the steps towards finding her birth parents.
"Something deep within me has clicked into place. I fell ready for full life as opposed to half life," Pippa writes after spending a month in America with her birth parents. Everything is golden. Finally, all of her weird quirks are explained. Her mother is messy and artistic; her father is idealistic and outgoing. So, when her mother asks her to move to New York, Pippa jumps at the chance to spend more time in the nation and with the family she is so comfortable with.
However, the American Dream isn't quite what Pippa expected it to be. Her mother is clingy and her father is involved in a political scandal. She finds herself questioning her decisions and rethinking her childhood. Suddenly she realizes that, for better or worse, it is the people who raised her that have had the most impact on her life, reminding us all that we owe more to our parents than we give them credit for.
Following Pippa through her various mishaps on the way to self-discovery is a riotous ride. However, The English American is not just a barrel of laughs; it also serves as a great reminder that, for better or worse, we are what our experiences have made us. In the words of my favorite Greek, Aristotle, "We are what we repeatedly do." So, for these last few weeks of the spring semester, do well and pick up a copy of The English American.
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