Without a Net: Middle Class and Homeless (with Kids) in America

Michelle Kennedy tells the story of her summer of homelessness with great honesty and good writing. Coping with a young marriage, an irresponsible husband, three young children, finding work, living out of a car, strained parental relationships, and trying to find a home is a set of daunting tasks. Kennedy lays it all on the table in a way that makes this a page turner. As I read the book, I kept asking, "How long can this go on?" and "What about the children?" Despite her faults and self-doubts, you have to root for Kennedy and her family. You're glad to see the happy ending, but you wonder about others who aren't so lucky and why some of the people she comes to know don't provide more help. A book well worth reading and discussing.

If you're looking for great literature or even a "good read," you should probably skip this book. The author has very little insight into homelessness, herself, or even (it seems)the reality that she purports to be writing about. It's not just that she made one bad decision after another-- we've all made some howlingly bad choices in life-- but the fact that, even while writing about them for publication, she doesn't seem to understand what her experience means in a greater context. A million American children are homeless on any given night, she informs us . . . in a post-script. She seems blind to anything but her own, mostly inchoate and unthinking, desires.

She throws in a few throwaway lines in the post-script, justifying her bad show more decisions and her treatment of other people. She assures us that her kids don't even remember her irresponsible treatment of them. I'm sure they wouldn't have remembered much about it if a real tragedy had occurred, either. The children's lack of memories don't justify the neglect.

The funny thing is that Michelle Kennedy is a lot like me. We made similar stupid decisions. We come from similar middle class backgrounds. Like most people with our backgrounds, we both have lived only one paycheck from disaster for years. Maybe that's why her breezy and offhand account of her mindless youth grates on me so badly. It's like I'm seeing my own bad decisions magnified and then, instead of owning up to them, just rationalizing them away. Uck. show less