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.

Read my full review of the audio book at The Book Lady's Blog. ( )

Hypocrite in a Pouffy White Dress by Susan Jane Gilman (2005)

Mixed review for this book. Parts I loved when I actually choked laughing, other parts lacked interest. I would recommend it to friends looking for a "quirky" read. ( )

In Susan Gilman’s memoir she writes about her early childhood upbringing by quirky, hippie parents, her rebellious teenage years and continues through adulthood. She writes about the changing relationship that occurs with her parents, as she becomes an adult. The stories are humorous and touching and she doesn’t hesitate to point out how her beliefs sometimes contradict her actions, especially when it comes to feminism. This is a wonderful entertaining book. ( )

Susan Jane Gilman was raised in Upper West Manhattan in the 1970’s, before it became gentrified. Her family was pretty laid back and “groovy” - her grandmother claimed to be a Communist and her mother signed the whole family up for Transcendental Meditation. Throughout it all, Susie retained an active imagination and developed a sense of humor. Her family motto was, “Reality is for people with no imagination.” Hypocrite in a Pouffy White Dress: Tales of Growing Up Groovy and Clueless by Susan Jane Gilman is her memoir. It starts in her pre-school years and ends when she moved to Geneva shortly after her marriage.

Some of her stories are hilarious - she was tired of her ordinary name, so she convinced her kindergarten teacher that she was changing her name to Sapphire. Her mother signed the whole family up to learn Transcendental Meditation, and her biggest concern was that she might run into a boy she had a crush on who happened to live in the same building as the TM Center. When she wrote an article about gay Rabbis, everyone assumed she was a lesbian and she had to figure out a way to “come out of the closet.”

Parts of the book were touching. Susan was assigned to go to Poland to write an article on the March of the Living - an event where three thousand Jewish teen-agers met in Poland to learn about the Holocaust. Her parents broke up when her brother was in college and she felt her family suffered from a “temporary psychosis that plagued every other divorcing family in America.”

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I laughed out loud quite a few times. After reading this book, I feel like I could sit and talk to Susan Jane Gilman for hours - she’s so interesting and funny! ( )