There's Nothing in This Book That I Meant to Say

Stand-up comic, mother of three, and recovered alcoholic, Paula Poundstone tells all in a frank stream-of-consciousness memoir. Poundstone uses the lives of historical figures, including Joan of Arc ("called by God and driven to drink"), Charles Dickens ("a beloved novelist and incredible bookstore employee"), the Wright Brothers ("flying planes and busing tables"), and Sitting Bull ("a great warrior and a heck of a Ping-Pong player"), as jumping-off points for her own story. While this makes for a lively structure, with funny one-liners, sometimes Poundstone gets sluggish and bogged down in her material. Overall, this is worth the chuckles but is too long and in need of a laugh track. M.T.B. (c) AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine

August 7, 2006
Poundstone makes self-involvement entertaining in her memoir-cum-history, which takes biographical sketches of seven historical figures—from Joan of Arc to the Wright brothers—as an excuse for a hilarious and sometimes exhausting stream-of-consciousness confessional. She's interested in other people, she explains, it's just that their stories inevitably—and uncontrollably—trigger her own: "Martin Luther King could come to my house tonight and say, 'I have a dream...' and I'd cut him off and say, 'I had a dream once, too, only in mine....'" Most everything reminds Poundstone of her well-publicized drinking problem. Joan of Arc didn't drive her livestock to pasture while drunk, but if she did they'd "have something in common." Segue to Poundstone being court-ordered on television to attend Alcoholics Anonymous ("That pretty much blows the hell out of the second A"). An explanation of Helen Keller's deafness and blindness is the perfect opportunity for the non sequitur: "God, I loved to drink." But Poundstone deals frankly with the nightmarish results of her alcoholism: she temporarily loses custody of her children, does 180 days in rehab and "was seeing four therapists a week to satisfy the court. Even Sybil didn't see four therapists."

January 29, 2007
The intentionally disjointed structure of this audiobook—Poundstone presenting biographies of seven historical figures, including Joan of Arc, Helen Keller and Abraham Lincoln, with each fact launching her into a tangent about her own life—works particularly well on audio. Poundstone sounds like she's chatting naturally and keeps remembering other things she wants to say. She's frank, funny and immensely likable. Her autobiographical stories are often harrowing: she was convicted of driving while intoxicated with her three adopted children in the car, and lost custody of them for a year. Her pain at the memory is obvious, but she leavens the subject matter with plenty of black humor and irony: noting that she was court-ordered on television to attend Alcoholics Anonymous, she comments, "That pretty much blows the hell out of the second A." There are many quotable one-liners, amid Poundstone's self-deprecating humor. By turns funny and poignant, this is a book that shines on audio. Simultaneous release with the Harmony hardcover (Reviews, Aug. 17).