What better day than Mother’s Day to review Cathy Guisewite’s Fifty Things That Aren’t My Fault? The essay collection, like Guisewite’s “Cathy” cartoons, is filled with family relationships and guilt. It’s subtitled “Essays from the Grown-Up Years”, but anyone who read “Cathy” will recognize the adult and her relationship with her parents.
There are some differences. Even though “Cathy” wasn’t Guisewite, there are enough similarities that many of us recognize the relationship with food, the body image issues. Those are still there in the collection of essays, along with list after list of 5 reasons I haven’t exercised today. Guisewite may not be drawing cartoons, but she still sees into the heart of those of us who have aged with her.
However, there are some differences and changes from the “Cathy” we all thought we knew. Guisewite adopted a daughter, who was nineteen at the time this book was written. But, she reveals a little about the adoption, and even more about coping with a teen going off to college. She always writes about it with humor. She doesn’t have a lot to say about her relationship with her two sisters. (Who even knew she had sisters?) But, all three women are united in trying to cope with parents who are ninety.
Driving, technology, working in the kitchen. Although Cathy Guisewite’s parents are in their nineties, her storytelling in essay form brings back the loving parents her readers will recognize from the cartoons. But, now, instead of her parents taking care of her, Guisewite is attempting to care for parents who don’t want changes in their lives.
No matter how much Cathy Guisewite tries to distance her self from the cartoon figure of “Cathy”, the humor, the family relationships, the drama over small worries is still present in her essays. It’s fun to feel as if we’re catching up on a friend’s life in Fifty Things That Aren’t My Fault.
Cathy Guisewite’s website is www.cathyguisewite.com
Fifty Things That Aren’t My Fault: Essays from the Grown-Up Years by Cathy Guisewite. G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 2019. ISBN 9780735218420 (hardcover), 323p.
*****
FTC Full Disclosure – Library book
I’m on the list for this at the library.
That's where I picked mine up, Sandy.
Jackie was a big fan of Cathy. I bet she would like this one.
And let me say Happy Mother's Day to all the mothers out there.
It became a little repetitive at times, Jeff, but I still enjoyed it.