Description

Why the only thing my family tree actually develops is crazy?”   Wade Rouse efforts to answer that question in his blisteringly interesting new memoir by taking a look at the annual festivities that unite all of us and enhance the utmost effective and worst within our closest and dearest.   Family is really the only present that keeps on giving—namely, the presents of disorder and eccentricity—and Wade Rouse’s family hasbeen particularly altruistic: His chatty however caring mom dresses her sonas an Ubangi tribesman, in blackface, for Halloween in the rural Ozarks; his unusual manufacture ofa father buries his children’s Easter-Eggs; his marvelouslyMartha Stewart–esque companion thinks Barbie is his infant; his garage-sales preoccupied group of in-laws areconvinced they are able to earn much more than Warren Buffett by promoting their damaged lights and Nehru jackets; hismutt Marge talks her very own language; and his oddball assortment of relatives features a tipsy Santa Clauswith an appreciation for revealing his jingle balls. Ultimately, however, the Rouse Home talented Wade with love,fun, knowledge, excellent comic timing, and a humbling gratitude for humiliation.    Whether Wade dates a mime on his birthday to overcome his fear of clowns or outruns a chubchasing chef on Secretary’s Evening, he catches our vacations with his trademark self deprecating humor and acerbic wit. He offers a humorous, sad, touching, andoutlandish face of an an all-too-common household that'll perhaps you have appreciating—or shrieking and bemoaning—yourown in fun.