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    She Got Up Off the Couch
    She Got Up Off the Couch
    She Got Up Off the Couch
    Audiobook8 hours

    She Got Up Off the Couch

    Written by Haven Kimmel

    Narrated by Haven Kimmel

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Picking up where A Girl Named Zippy left off, Haven Kimmel crafts a tender portrait of her mother, a modestly heroic woman who took the odds that life gave her and somehow managed to win.

    When we last saw Zippy, she was oblivious to the storm that was brewing in her home. Her mother, Delonda, had literally just gotten up off the couch and ridden her rickety bicycle down the road. Her dad was off somewhere, gambling or "working." And Zippy was lost in her own fabulous world of exploring the fringes of Moorland, Indiana.

    Increasingly frustrated with the limitations of her small-town, married-with-children life, Delonda decides first to learn how to drive a car, even though she won't have access to one. Next, she applies to the local college, eventually graduating with honors at age forty. We happily follow Zippy from one story to another, but we know this is really her mother's book: the poignant tale of a strong woman who found a way to save herself and set a proud example for her daughter.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHighbridge Company
    Release dateDec 27, 2005
    ISBN9781598878905
    She Got Up Off the Couch
    Author

    Haven Kimmel

    Haven Kimmel is the author of The Used World, She Got Up Off the Couch, Something Rising (Light and Swift), The Solace of Leaving Early, and A Girl Named Zippy. She studied English and creative writing at Ball State University and North Carolina State University and attended seminary at the Earlham School of Religion. She lives in Durham, N.C.

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    Reviews for She Got Up Off the Couch

    4/5

    286 ratings16 reviews

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    • 4/5
      I wasn't crazy about the book. It was an interesting story but seemed to avoid some pertinent details. Maybe if the author was the sort of person who could fill in the blanks she would be a less effective storyteller.
    • 5/5
      This was another excellent book by Kimmel, enchanting me with small towns all over again, and reminding me why life is good.
    • 4/5
      Hilarious and touching.
    • 3/5
      irritating voice. irritating family. irritating character.
    • 4/5
      We listened to this in the car. Kimmel has a deft touch with language, and a deadpan delivery that can be hilarious. A nicely crafted memoir, and one read by the author to good effect. A lot of fun. I'm going to look up the book which came before this, too.
    • 2/5
      Haven Kimmel is a pretty good writer, but I couldn't stick with this book even though it has a really excellent title. I mean, genius work there, it pulled me in for certain. But the content, I think if I was of that genereation maybe it would draw me in and keep me there. As it was I started with a bang and squeaked to a stop around chapter 7 or 8. I don't know, it just got boring.
    • 4/5
      A nice contrast to Kimmel's first book, A Girl Called Zippy. The first book was essentially a love story to Kimmel's tiny hometown. This one is dedicated to her mother, who decided one day that it was time to go to college and get off the couch. Despite her husband's total opposition, she was able to get loans to pay for it, enroll in classes, find a way to get to class without a car or driver's license, eventually acquire both, and then graduate with a 4.0.It was inspiring, but it was a sad story too. Kimmel doesn't seem to spend much time feeling sorry for herself, and she certainly kept busy getting into -and out of - trouble all the time. But she was dressed in ragged, dirty clothes, her parents never knew where she was, and she began to feel more and more like her mother had forgotten about her and her dad had his own interests that were crowding her out.Maybe that's just to be expected. The first book was hysterically funny, but this one deals with some of the themes of growing up - alienation and disappointment. It made for a good story, but it wasn't very funny. Lots of great parts - I loved Zippy's babysitting efforts with her nephew and her visit to summer camp. 4 stars.
    • 3/5
      The only reason I decided to read this book was because I am from Indiana. It was kind of nice to read things about my home state...example: Ball State University, New Castle, the crazy weather.
    • 5/5
      When I read books to review, I put little markers on the pages to note where something stood out – either a quote or a happening that I will probably want to comment on. Positive or negative, most of the books I read have about 8, maybe 9 markers at the most. “She Got Up Off the Couch”? Had 16 markers…and none of them were for negative things.I only “discovered” Haven Kimmel about 2 months ago, and since then, I’ve read 3 of her books and am starting on my fourth. One of them, the one for which she is probably most well known is “A Girl Named Zippy” – which was the memoir that leads into this one. I finished my review of that book by saying, “I’m looking forward to another trip to Mooreland…in a literary way.”This trip to Mooreland, Indiana (pop. 300) was just as enjoyable…but where Zippy seemed written with adult words but through a child’s eyes…”She Got Up Off the Couch” is colored far more deeply with adult sensibilities. With Zippy, we saw the good of her childhood and only the smallest hints of that which was not as it should be…but now Kimmel opens our eyes.For instance, in “Zippy”, her brother Danny is pictured as a silent hero, one who was “different” – but only in ways that made him more loved and admired by Kimmel. In this book, we learn more.“…one afternoon when he lost his temper Mom said, “Danny, I’m taking your cap away until you can behave yourself. When you’re done acting this way, you can have it back.” He looked her dead in the eye. He was three years old. He said, “I don’t ever want it back.” And she knew right then that she had snapped a little something in him entirely by accident, a part of him that must have been born fearing the way love unzips us and leaves us vulnerable to assault. He zipped that part up.”Beautifully written, and this time, instead of acting as just another family anecdote, this time we feel more of the repercussions behind the story.Let me just say here that I loved both books, and am VERY glad I read them in this order. Hmmm – makes me think of Rebecca Wells – I am so glad I read “Ya-Ya Sisterhood” before “Little Altars” – even through “Altars” was written first. Guess I need the lighter parts of the story before I peel back the skin to see what’s really underneath. Gotta fall in love before I get all the details, turns out.Anyway – to finish for now with Danny, Haven Kimmel writes this of her older brother: “In truth, if here could be said to be one truth about my brother, it is that he carried both a tombstone and scraps of coal in a little read wagon, and what that did to him and what it meant to him is written in a closed book in a library guarded by dragons. He sang like an angel, he was faithful to God and he waited honorably for the wife he believed God chose for him. He made two daughters who shone like mirrors in the direct sun; he blazed his path with a scythe and his broad shoulders, and he was who he chose to be, which is the hardest and bravest thing a man can do. He looked at us, his parents, his sisters, his whole crooked family, and he flexed his jaw muscles, packed up his truck, and drove away.” Where there are several parts of the book that acknowledge the darker side of Kimmel’s small town life, there are many, many parts like this:“Bu the time we were thirteen Rose and I had been friends for nine years. Nine years is an effort, it requires commitment, and that much history becomes heavy, it has weight. There were all those nosebleeds (Rose was the only person I knew with chronic, scary nosebleeds, so I assumed it was a Catholic thing; her strange relationship to “white chocolate”, which was, no doubt about it, a left-handed invention.”And - “Judy Blume was the personal savior of every girl in the Mooreland Elementary School and I swear if not for her none of us would have known the slightest thing about the slightest thing.” Amen!Remembering that Kimmel’s nickname was Zippy, it’s another example of the unique child she was…”He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother”…(was) a favorite to play not at top volume in my bedroom, but downstairs on the stereo that was shaped, improbably, like a Colonial desk. I liked to sing along with Donny (Osmond) while simultaneously pretending to draft a version of the Bill of Rights, using a fake quill pen. (In truth, a turkey feather.)”This book is so beautiful and so sad and so funny…and I haven’t even touched on the actual story yet. After years and years of living her life from a couch and through books, Kimmel’s mother abruptly breaks away, attends college, earns a master’s degree and loses over a hundred pounds. Where Kimmel writes of her mother, “She had taken her vows and then they had taken her, and the forces amassed against her were greater than love, greater than obligation. They were elemental, heavy as a dead planet. One chance – that’s what she had seen she had – one flying leap that was really composed of eight thousand separate possibilities for failing…”This is a book about growing up. Both the author and her mother seem to evolve in this book. Their eyes open to the world that surrounds them. Haven Kimmel starts to see that her world is far different than the magical one she thought she knew. And her mother Delonda finally takes the leap that frees her from the tiny world of her couch in Mooreland into a world that is more amazing than she could believe.The results are mixed. The family that Kimmel loved and thought she knew was little more than a mirage. There was magic in her childhood, true, but now we (and she) know some of it was dark. There is still much in this book that is sweet, but though the author still never seems bitter, now that sweetness is tinged with a bit of sorrow.“If my family could be represented with different-colored blips on a time line, there would be years and years where there were four all huddled up together, although it’s best not to dwell too long on that part because it would have been before I was born and it hardly makes sense anyway. Following that would be just a few years where there were five, and some of that time we were in a pile but for most of them the brother-colored blip was pulling away. Then he was gone. Back to four, but again, only briefly. The sister-blip moved away, if not so far. And for some time during the years there were three of us…”“So there would be a little piece of this visual aid, a few inches at most, where I thought there were three of us but I was wrong. At best there was Mom and me together, and sometimes – not nearly so often – Dad and me. But most of the time I was sitting there alone, and didn’t realize it. A mercy, that ignorance.”
    • 4/5
      A little more gloomy than the earlier Girl Named Zippy.
    • 5/5
      I liked this one even better than the previous "A Girl Named Zippy". In the audiobook version, Kimmel reads her own story and I think that adds immensely to the storytelling, coming firsthand & with all the voice inflections that were originally intended. This book has a somewhat more serious underlying tone than the first, but was still hilarious. Being a Hoosier myself, although not quite as rural as she, I particularly enjoyed the Indiana references and geographical landmarks & locations. Having previously read one of her novels (Something Rising: Light & Swift), I was almost turned off by this author, but am glad I went ahead and read the Zippy memoirs. Her fiction is totally different, which may or may not appeal to fans of "Zippy".
    • 5/5
      I love this writer.
    • 4/5
      Told as a child would tell it. Quite a remarkable job of showing how she originally experienced what was happening to the members of her family.
    • 3/5
      Not quite as entertaining as her first book, but still a nice casual read. My favorite quote: "my hair looks like it had been purchased at a rummage sale after all the real hair was gone."
    • 4/5
      The sequel to Zippy. I had to read it! Again, a winner. Zippy and her mom are funny women.
    • 4/5
      This is the sequel to Kimmel's previous memoir, A Girl Named Zippy. Like Zippy, this book is full of humor even though Kimmel's life wasn't exactly a walk in the park. They were dirt poor, her father was sort of a rambler and gambler, her mother wasn't motivated to do much of anything but sit on the couch and read (I can relate) and go to prayer meetings. But even though life wasn't perfect, Kimmel seems to have always found the joy and love in actually living it. And her mother did end up getting off the couch and doing something really amazing.I think the reason I like Kimmel's books so much is that she is often physically incapacitated by laughter. I know that feeling. Life is just so incredibly funny sometimes. And, so what if it's not some days; the next joke or adventure is just around the corner.I'd definitely recommend this book if you like the memoir genre at all, but read A Girl Named Zippy first.