The only reason I decided to read this book was because I am from Indiana. It was kind of nice to read things about my home state...example: Ball State University, New Castle, the crazy weather. ( )

When I read books to review, I put little markers on the pages to note where something stood out – either a quote or a happening that I will probably want to comment on. Positive or negative, most of the books I read have about 8, maybe 9 markers at the most. “She Got Up Off the Couch”? Had 16 markers…and none of them were for negative things.

I only “discovered” Haven Kimmel about 2 months ago, and since then, I’ve read 3 of her books and am starting on my fourth. One of them, the one for which she is probably most well known is “A Girl Named Zippy” – which was the memoir that leads into this one. I finished my review of that book by saying, “I’m looking forward to another trip to Mooreland…in a literary way.”

This trip to Mooreland, Indiana (pop. 300) was just as enjoyable…but where Zippy seemed written with adult words but through a child’s eyes…”She Got Up Off the Couch” is colored far more deeply with adult sensibilities. With Zippy, we saw the good of her childhood and only the smallest hints of that which was not as it should be…but now Kimmel opens our eyes.

For instance, in “Zippy”, her brother Danny is pictured as a silent hero, one who was “different” – but only in ways that made him more loved and admired by Kimmel. In this book, we learn more.

“…one afternoon when he lost his temper Mom said, “Danny, I’m taking your cap away until you can behave yourself. When you’re done acting this way, you can have it back.” He looked her dead in the eye. He was three years old. He said, “I don’t ever want it back.” And she knew right then that she had snapped a little something in him entirely by accident, a part of him that must have been born fearing the way love unzips us and leaves us vulnerable to assault. He zipped that part up.”

Beautifully written, and this time, instead of acting as just another family anecdote, this time we feel more of the repercussions behind the story.

Let me just say here that I loved both books, and am VERY glad I read them in this order. Hmmm – makes me think of Rebecca Wells – I am so glad I read “Ya-Ya Sisterhood” before “Little Altars” – even through “Altars” was written first. Guess I need the lighter parts of the story before I peel back the skin to see what’s really underneath. Gotta fall in love before I get all the details, turns out.

Anyway – to finish for now with Danny, Haven Kimmel writes this of her older brother: “In truth, if here could be said to be one truth about my brother, it is that he carried both a tombstone and scraps of coal in a little read wagon, and what that did to him and what it meant to him is written in a closed book in a library guarded by dragons. He sang like an angel, he was faithful to God and he waited honorably for the wife he believed God chose for him. He made two daughters who shone like mirrors in the direct sun; he blazed his path with a scythe and his broad shoulders, and he was who he chose to be, which is the hardest and bravest thing a man can do. He looked at us, his parents, his sisters, his whole crooked family, and he flexed his jaw muscles, packed up his truck, and drove away.”

Where there are several parts of the book that acknowledge the darker side of Kimmel’s small town life, there are many, many parts like this:

“Bu the time we were thirteen Rose and I had been friends for nine years. Nine years is an effort, it requires commitment, and that much history becomes heavy, it has weight. There were all those nosebleeds (Rose was the only person I knew with chronic, scary nosebleeds, so I assumed it was a Catholic thing; her strange relationship to “white chocolate”, which was, no doubt about it, a left-handed invention.”

And - “Judy Blume was the personal savior of every girl in the Mooreland Elementary School and I swear if not for her none of us would have known the slightest thing about the slightest thing.” Amen!

Remembering that Kimmel’s nickname was Zippy, it’s another example of the unique child she was…”He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother”…(was) a favorite to play not at top volume in my bedroom, but downstairs on the stereo that was shaped, improbably, like a Colonial desk. I liked to sing along with Donny (Osmond) while simultaneously pretending to draft a version of the Bill of Rights, using a fake quill pen. (In truth, a turkey feather.)”

This book is so beautiful and so sad and so funny…and I haven’t even touched on the actual story yet. After years and years of living her life from a couch and through books, Kimmel’s mother abruptly breaks away, attends college, earns a master’s degree and loses over a hundred pounds. Where Kimmel writes of her mother, “She had taken her vows and then they had taken her, and the forces amassed against her were greater than love, greater than obligation. They were elemental, heavy as a dead planet. One chance – that’s what she had seen she had – one flying leap that was really composed of eight thousand separate possibilities for failing…”

This is a book about growing up. Both the author and her mother seem to evolve in this book. Their eyes open to the world that surrounds them. Haven Kimmel starts to see that her world is far different than the magical one she thought she knew. And her mother Delonda finally takes the leap that frees her from the tiny world of her couch in Mooreland into a world that is more amazing than she could believe.

The results are mixed. The family that Kimmel loved and thought she knew was little more than a mirage. There was magic in her childhood, true, but now we (and she) know some of it was dark. There is still much in this book that is sweet, but though the author still never seems bitter, now that sweetness is tinged with a bit of sorrow.

“If my family could be represented with different-colored blips on a time line, there would be years and years where there were four all huddled up together, although it’s best not to dwell too long on that part because it would have been before I was born and it hardly makes sense anyway. Following that would be just a few years where there were five, and some of that time we were in a pile but for most of them the brother-colored blip was pulling away. Then he was gone. Back to four, but again, only briefly. The sister-blip moved away, if not so far. And for some time during the years there were three of us…”

“So there would be a little piece of this visual aid, a few inches at most, where I thought there were three of us but I was wrong. At best there was Mom and me together, and sometimes – not nearly so often – Dad and me. But most of the time I was sitting there alone, and didn’t realize it. A mercy, that ignorance.” ( )

A little more gloomy than the earlier Girl Named Zippy. ( )

I liked this one even better than the previous "A Girl Named Zippy". In the audiobook version, Kimmel reads her own story and I think that adds immensely to the storytelling, coming firsthand & with all the voice inflections that were originally intended. This book has a somewhat more serious underlying tone than the first, but was still hilarious. Being a Hoosier myself, although not quite as rural as she, I particularly enjoyed the Indiana references and geographical landmarks & locations. Having previously read one of her novels (Something Rising: Light & Swift), I was almost turned off by this author, but am glad I went ahead and read the Zippy memoirs. Her fiction is totally different, which may or may not appeal to fans of "Zippy". ( )

A great follow-up to Kimmel's A girl named Zippy. This one is a but "darker" in content, but her mother is definitely a woman to admire. I also enjoyed reading about her sister's antics and her great come-backs. For me, I just hope that her fiction work reflects her talents as a memoir writer. ( )