Portland zinester's tales become a book
By DEIRDRE FULTON | June 3, 2009
After twice seeing the one-woman stage adaptation of The Passion of the Hausfrau at Portland Stage Company, and perusing several issues of the Hausfrau mutha-zine, I was curious to see how Nicole Chaison's tales of motherhood would translate to book form. Turns out, the trials and tribulations of parenting — trying to be a nurturing, progressive, patient mom, while also being a loving wife, and fulfilling personal creative and intellectual needs — are equally entertaining when bound all together. And the Hausfrau trajectory, which the Portland mother of two compares to the self-discovery journey of a mythical tragic hero, lends itself to being told in a continuous arc.
The Passion of The Hausfrau: Motherhood, Illuminated | by Nicole Chaison | Villard | 256 pages | $22 |
The Passion of the Hausfrau: Motherhood, Illuminated (a book-release celebration is planned for June 19 at Longfellow Books), retains the zine's conversational tone. It is a unique skill to impart parenting wisdom without being patronizing or self-righteous, and perhaps Chaison's whimsical, comic-inspired drawings, which complement and add to each story, help achieve that.
But most appealing is how vulnerable Chaison allows herself to be. Here is a woman who struggles with her sex drive, her feelings of ineptness and insecurity, her occasionally unruly children; here is a wife who loves and sometimes resents her husband; here is a writer without time to write; here is a woman who drinks wine to calm down, needs medication to deal with depression, deals with a passive-aggressive mother, gets sick, and cries. In other words, a woman like many of us. And because we relate to her, Chaison's joys — her delight in her children, her creative blossoming and success, her honest relationship with her husband — are that much easier to embrace.
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- Deep impact
In the most memorable piece in Waterville author Ron Currie Jr.'s 2007 debut short story collection, God is Dead (Viking), God is reincarnated as a Dinka woman in a refugee camp in Sudan, who enlists a jive-talking Colin Powell in an effort to find a young boy.
- Dead like me
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- Back-to-school supplies
After a summer that started with a monsoon and coasted into its final lap with a heat wave, when we talked about Wilco, celebrity deaths, and Shakespeare in the park, when we feared tasers and crime sprees, and we consumed Mexican food and ice cream, we're ready to make the transition into fall.
- Which was fine
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The title assumes an evolution of meanings in Trying , an autobiographical drama by Joanna McClelland Glass, based on her experiences with the real-life Judge Biddle.
- No assignments here
Need a break from all that required reading this fall? You're in luck. In
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Maine novelist teases our brains
- Clever or klepto?
A certain branch of modern liberal academia could stand a little likening to Lear, as stubbornly entrenched in its own theories, deconstructions, and Weltanschauungen as it is.
- Mixin' it up
First on my dance card this fall is the Good Theater's The Little Dog Laughed (September 17-October 11), a scathing comedy about Hollywood, a closeted actor's indiscretions with a hustler, and his agent's desperate clean-up duties.
- A play grows up at Portland Stage
It's hard to identify any specific differences in this year's incarnation of The Passion of the Hausfrau , but the one-woman show, which debuted as part of Portland Stage Company's Little Festival of the Unexpected last year, is certainly more polished this time around.
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