Rating: 
Summary: Sad and Predictable
Review: Prior to reading this book, I read reviews which proclaimed this book as being "A Masterpiece." I will say that the topic of the book is SAD and Depressing and my heart goes out to anyone that has experienced what the author has written. I felt so depressed chapter after chapter. The book seemed to be getting worse the deeper I read and I was unable to complete the last 3 chapters without a good, strong, stiff drink.....And I don't even drink.
Rating:
Summary: Sad and Predictable
Review: Prior to reading this book, I read reviews which proclaimed this book as being "A Masterpiece." I will say that the topic of the book is SAD and Depressing and my heart goes out to anyone that has experienced what the author has written. I felt so depressed chapter after chapter. The book seemed to be getting worse the deeper I read and I was unable to complete the last 3 chapters without a good, strong, stiff drink.....And I don't even drink.
Rating: 
Summary: Touching
Review: This is the story of a long self-discovery journey. Ms. Lyden writes a mostly wonderful memoir of her life. Although the main focus is apparently her mother, the book has a few sub-themes and characters to make it flow in a wonderful way. It was written so well, that I took two months to read it in order to make it last as long as possible. I loved all the details of her early childhood, and particularly got fond of Jackie's grandmother. I've seen reviews saying that Ms. Lyden writting was self absorbed and that she was playing a martyr. I dissagre, I think she was honest, even to the point of confessing how a part of her wanted her mother locked up in county's mental institution. One of my fears on reading this book was to find it too depressing, and true, it had some sad moments, but I also found myself laughing pretty hard. The whole Christmas episode where her mother pretends to be dead, was hilarious. One of those family situations that infuriates you when it happens and years laters you talk about it, and find the humor in it. I can see why Ms. Lyden wrote about her Middle-East experience as a relation to Sheba's Queendom, but the whole situation on her "Rodeo" job was a little distracting. It was an interesting part of her life that should be in another of her future books. Everything else in the book is top notch and I recomend reading it.
Rating:
Summary: What a Queendom!
Review: This is the story of a long self-discovery journey. Ms. Lyden writes a mostly wonderful memoir of her life. Although the main focus is apparently her mother, the book has a few sub-themes and characters to make it flow in a wonderful way. It was written so well, that I took two months to read it in order to make it last as long as possible. I loved all the details of her early childhood, and particularly got fond of Jackie's grandmother. I've seen reviews saying that Ms. Lyden writting was self absorbed and that she was playing a martyr. I dissagre, I think she was honest, even to the point of confessing how a part of her wanted her mother locked up in county's mental institution. One of my fears on reading this book was to find it too depressing, and true, it had some sad moments, but I also found myself laughing pretty hard. The whole Christmas episode where her mother pretends to be dead, was hilarious. One of those family situations that infuriates you when it happens and years laters you talk about it, and find the humor in it. I can see why Ms. Lyden wrote about her Middle-East experience as a relation to Sheba's Queendom, but the whole situation on her "Rodeo" job was a little distracting. It was an interesting part of her life that should be in another of her future books. Everything else in the book is top notch and I recomend reading it.
Rating: 
Summary: (3.5) A dark and haunting tale...
Review: To travel this memoir with the author, the reader gains some small comprehension of life with a bi-polar personality and how the illness dominates a family, shrinking everyone else into insignificance. Bi-polar disorder or manic depression is a phenomenon recently addressed by a number of women in their memoirs, or any of a myriad of dysfunctional behaviors that tear at the fabric of family structure.In the severest cases a role reversal takes place early in the daughter's life, predictably long before the child has even defined herself. Literally, the child is forced by circumstance to relinquish her childhood; by its very nature, this confusion enables the mother to continue the destructive behavior at the expense of the entire family unit. The price is enormous, as each sibling spends years as an adult trying to recover the child within, forced to be nurturer rather than nurtured. This usurpation of childhood is probably more common than it would appear to an observer because family members cover for eachother, creating a united front. While Lyden paints a vivid picture of the desolation of mental illness, by far the more heartbreaking reality is the years of confusion ahead for the daughter, whose own behavior may have become more risky and outrageous in an effort to compensate. The mother's legacy is a few moments of pure joy in a lifetime of painful distortion. I found the book truthful and brutally honest, until the last chapter. By then I knew everything I ever wanted to know about Lyden's mother. The final chapter, "The Queen of Sheba", seemed to wrap the package in a bow, as if to say, "See how clever she is, even in her delusions?" At that point I was exhausted by Lyden's mother and her terminal uniqueness. The debris left in the wake of her chaos leaves nothing to the imagination. The memoir spoke entirely to me of a woman's struggle to survive her childhood, warts and all, to purchase a sense of self from the remains.
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