Book Review: Donna Van Straten Remmert's Head Over Heels: Stories from the 1950s

Title: Head Over Heels: Stories about the 1950s
Author: Donna Van Straten Remmert
Publisher: RemArt Publishing
ISBN: 978-0-9710959-6-0
Publication Year: 2012

One of my great jobs is to interview authors for the Story Circle Journal and to review their books for Story Circle Network's wonderful book review site, www.storycirclebookreviews.org, a site devoted solely to books by, for and about women. In September, I had the pleasure of reading Donna Van Straten Remmert's latest hilarious memoir, Head Over Heels: Stories About the 1950s. Here is the review which first appeared on the SCBR site and in the quarterly journal. (When you're done reading it give the site a look-see. Donna's other two memoirs are reviewed there too.)

In this, the third installment of her memoir that began with The Littlest Big Kid and Jitterbug Girl, Donna Van Straten Remmert delights us with the lively tale of her exodus from her small Wisconsin hometown, Black Creek, to the “big city,” Madison, WI to begin life as a college co-ed in 1955. As she did in her first two memoirs, Donna allows her younger voice to speak in a down-to-earth conversational style that will have you roaring with laughter. Young Donna is as spunky as she is innocent, forging her father’s signature on her admission form. When she is accepted her father is far from pleased. He warns her she will be exposed to immoral ideas by liberal professors, anti-establishment bohemians and maybe even tricked by communists into signing something that would get her in trouble. Her mothers’ advice is more direct: to remember she’s a Van Straten, to say her prayers, go to Mass and do her laundry once a week.

Donna’s need-based scholarship doesn’t cover everything and a college education isn’t all she’s after. She hopes to meet “the one”, but in the meantime she’s got a chance to go to Europe and she’s saving every penny she can to make it happen. She has to work hard at a series of jobs—waiting tables, supervising the playground at an orphanage, and typing for a law firm. As Donna’s world view expands so do her questions about herself, her Catholic faith and her role as a woman in a male-dominated world. What is the most important quality in a woman? Is it more important to be pretty or smart? Sexy or sweet? Creative, curious, affectionate, clever in conversation, a good hostess?  Has going to college made men see Donna and her friends as too ambitious to make good wives and mothers? Is it possible to have a career as well as a husband and children? Is there such a thing as destiny and fate or do our choices shape our lives? Is morality relative or universal?

Whether she’s bargaining with God and the Virgin Mary for a good grade on her test, trying on a Bohemian tie-dyed tee over her Reindeer sweater in the back of a van, fighting off the advances of a German Baron, watching near-naked dancing girls with her brother and sister-in-law at the Moulin Rouge Theatre, or racing around Rome on the back of a scooter with a policeman she’s just met, Donna’s frankness and fresh-faced optimism, witty dialogue and touching inner thoughts will keep you turning pages.

Tune in next week for an interview with this gifted memoirist!

Note: Other than a copy of this book, I received no remuneration from the author or any other entity for this review.