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    Bettyville: A Memoir
    Bettyville: A Memoir
    Bettyville: A Memoir
    Audiobook10 hours

    Bettyville: A Memoir

    Written by George Hodgman

    Narrated by Jeff Woodman

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    A witty, tender memoir of a son's journey home to care for his irascible mother-a tale of secrets, silences, and enduring love When George Hodgman leaves Manhattan for his hometown of Paris, Missouri, he finds himself-an unlikely caretaker and near-lethal cook-in a head-on collision with his aging mother, Betty, a woman of wit and will. Will George lure her into assisted living? When hell freezes over. He can't bring himself to force her from the home both treasure-the place where his father's voice lingers, the scene of shared jokes, skirmishes, and, behind the dusty antiques, a rarely acknowledged conflict: Betty, who speaks her mind but cannot quite reveal her heart, has never really accepted the fact that her son is gay. As these two unforgettable characters try to bring their different worlds together, Hodgman reveals the challenges of Betty's life and his own struggle for self-respect, moving readers from their small town-crumbling but still colorful-to the star-studded corridors of Vanity Fair. Evocative of The End of Your Life Book Club and The Tender Bar, Hodgman's debut is both an indelible portrait of a family and an exquisitely told tale of a prodigal son's return.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateMar 10, 2015
    ISBN9781490662022
    Bettyville: A Memoir

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    Reviews for Bettyville

    4/5

    133 ratings19 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Poignant and laugh out loud funny at times, this memoir of a sophisticated Manhattan gay writer who returns to his little hometown in Missouri to care for his irascible mother with dementia is beautifully written.It is a caregiver tale, but the undercurrent of a son whose gayness has never been accepted by his mother makes the story that much more gripping.
    • 4/5
      How I wish I could write as beautifully as the author. This is his story of his commitment to his 91 year old mother. George moves from a life in Manhattan, NY to care for his mother in small town Missouri. This is the tale of adjustment to living with his cantankerous mother who daily presents challenges for patience.She is a character in every way. She is forward, kind, resilient, overbearing, sneaky, and loving, always loving!She insists on wearing mismatched clothing while she demands to keep her well-worn sandals on her feet. A beautiful woman when young, like all who grow older, the wrinkles deepen while her spirit remains steadfast.George calmly deals with her slide into forgetfulness, while admiring her stamina to undergo chemo for her cancer.The town is small, but the beauty is large.This excellently written, heart-felt homage to a mother who raised and loved her gay son is stunningly, beautifully embraced with crystal sharpness, and each page contains a tear and a smile. They grow together in acceptance of each other that calls forth as the days slip away.Read this one. I don't think you will be disappointed!Five Stars
    • 4/5
      I liked it. It made me think of my own mother in Gloriatown. I just hope I can cope with my personal Nancyburgh when the time comes.
    • 5/5
      "Bettyville", a beautifully-written memoir from author George Hodgman, will gently break places in your heart, and then it will tenderly patch them back together with warmth and humor. George Hodgman becomes the care provider for his elderly mother, Betty, leaving his life in Manhattan behind and returning to his home town of Paris, Missouri. Having reached the age of ninety-something by living in her own indomitable manner, Betty will not go quietly into old-age oblivion. As issues such as dementia, cancer, and increasing physical frailty creep into the picture, Betty remains a force to be reckoned with. At the age of ninety-one, she chooses to fight her cancer, and begins radiation therapy. Throughout all of their rumblings and grumblings while reconnecting and acclimating to once again living in the same house, it becomes clear that there is a great love between mother and son. Seeing Betty struggle, yet refuse to surrender her spirit, leads George to discover his own personal strengths and gives him the courage to move forward with choices for his future. My own mother's name was Betty, and while our life situation was quite different from George and his mother, much of our circumstances were similar. While George left home and then came back, I stayed with my mother for almost fifty years. My Betty and I were separated only when she passed away. George and his Betty remain together. "Bettyville" is keenly-observed, poignant, and written with great heart. A recommended read for caregivers, but also for those who receive the care.Book Copy Gratis Amazon Vine
    • 5/5
      I came to love Betty. I don't often say that about a character - although in this case being that it's a memoir - much less about a person I've never met. But it's true. Despite George's struggles, his care and the love he has for his mother shines through with his brilliant writing.
    • 3/5
      The author relates his experiences and musings about returning to his hometown in Missouri to care for his mother after having lived in New York. She has issues with her memory. He has struggles with his career, with relationships, and with her. I found parts of it interesting, especially since I'm familiar with the general location where he was in Missouri - so I found his reflections on how people live there interesting. His stories about coping with his mom's condition and the dog he adopts were endearing or at least interesting. But overall it just seemed an average read, not hugely memorable. For those with more of a similar way of thinking as the author it would probably be more enjoyable.
    • 5/5
      The title is Hodgman's term for Paris, Missouri, his small hometown and the place his mother has lived for most of her 90 years. In this memoir, Hodgman, a freelance editor, mid-fifties, gay and an only child, leaves New York City to return home and take care of his mother for what he hopes will be a brief bout of illness. It turns out that Betty has the beginnings of dementia. This is Hodgman's story of growing up with a loving, extroverted father and a distant, sharp-tongued mother in the 60's and 70's, when being gay made a person the subject of ridicule or pity. Hodgman was a young man in NYC right when the AIDS epidemic arrived, and he reached enormous success working at Vanity Fair. His past life and his current one, of caring for his difficult elderly mother, switch off, showing how much of his childhood created the man he now sees himself as, a man too damaged to be happy. This is the author's personal history, and also his family's. At times very funny, much more of sadness, and very introspective.
    • 4/5
      Charming, funny, and starkly honest. George leaves an editing job in New York to come home to Paris, Missouri, a small declining town where he grew up, to care for his mother who is in her 90s and failing mentally and physically. The book is about half and half about Betty, the mother, and George's nearly lifelong struggles with being homosexual. Both he and his mother are by turns funny and charming and then stubborn and difficult. The story feels intimate and yet classy in the way it is told. George doesn't expect to be in Paris long term, but his mother's condition requires someone to be with her and George's father died some years ago. George is a funny man so there is plenty of humor peppered throughout. There's also plenty that's sobering. It's about coming home, family that wouldn't discuss George's being different, and being an only child juggling all this. The story is touching.
    • 1/5
      Boring - I made it to page 80 and gave up.
    • 3/5
      I liked it because I could relate; and it was filled with love; at times, self-serving, but writers get to do that.
    • 4/5
      Several weeks ago I watched on CBS Sunday Morning the story of George Hodgeman caring for his 90 something mother in rural Missouri. The story touched me for many reasons. First, I spent a year and a half along with my siblings and sister in law aided by a caregiver to care for my dying mother. It's not easy. It's the most difficult thing I have done. Being a nurse/caregiver is not my nature. It's an act of love. So his journey was interesting to me. Caring for his mother gave him the opportunity to examine not only his relationship with his family but to look inside of himself and examine his life.Tender and brave. Filled with humor, revelations and sadness this memoir is a tribute to overcoming shame and the triumph of love.
    • 5/5
      When gay George leaves NYC and returns to Paris, Missouri to care for his aging mother, his life changes. His mother is failing and he’s her sole support. He examines his life and his mother’s they navigate the unknown. George’s insights about the dwindling small town he grew up in, his friends and his drug addiction provides both sadness and laughter. He’s able to make a connection with the reader, particularly if the reader is going through the same problem of aging parents as George is.
    • 5/5
      George Hodgman's homage to his mother as he returns home to take care of her as she ages. I enjoyed this book. It was a poignant retelling of life in Paris, MO as a gay man growing up in a small town and his return home to take care of his mother as her body and mind are failing. It was tough to watch Betty lose her independence and have to rely on others to help her. I can appreciate both points of view. Neither talks of what needs to be talked about since neither knew how to bring it up without causing a large rift in their relationship. Well worth reading.
    • 4/5
      I enjoyed this book for the most part. It was well told but sadder than I wanted it to be, but I guess that can't be helped with a memoir.
    • 5/5
      I am a reader of memoirs, and this is one of the most beautiful I've read. George Hodgman, New York writer, returns to the small town of Paris, Missouri, to care for his aging mother, Betty. His hope is to talk her into assisted living, leaving him free to return to his life in New York. But he finds that neither his mother nor he are done with their life in Paris, and they have still have much to learn about each other. Hodgman brings Betty to life on the page, with all her quirks, witticisms, confusion, tenacity, and love for her son. At one point, Betty asks if another man in Paris is gay, and Hodgman replies that he doesn't know about that man, but surely his mother must know by now that George himself is gay. Betty confesses that she and George's father never talked about it, never mentioned it once to each other. Hodgman's portrait of his father, a man who obviously loved his son very much, letting him quit football when he saw it was too strenuous for him, taking him to see Barbra Streisand in Funny Girl, is poignant. Hodgman also paints a panorama of the small Midwestern town as it was in his childhood and is now, all but destroyed by Walmarts, meth labs, and the breakup of the family farm, but still peopled with living, loving individuals. This book helped me be more accepting of my situation caring for my own 91-year-old, dementia-troubled mother. Bettyville is a wonderful, truth-filled, warm-hearted experience.
    • 5/5
      I loved this book. Hodgman weaves his own story, warts and all, with his mother's which makes for a tender, poignant examination of life. He paints a portrait of what it's like to grow up in a place and a family where he had to hide a significant part of himself. His need to try and avoid their disappointment and their need to avoid his identity shaped their lives in good measure. All that said, life goes on and to me, that's the story this book tells with great tenderness. As an added bonus, there are some parts of the book which involve dogs, in my book, always a good thing.
    • 5/5
      Mothers and sons have fought and been fraught through all of literature, but rarely as honestly and painfully as this important memoir. George Hodgman, last in a long line of farmer namesakes in Paris, Missouri, returns home after losing his high pressure editing job at a NY publishing house. His intent is to see his mother through to her life's ending. George is gay and has been extremely uncomfortable in his own skin and life since he can recall. Though cherished by his parents, all concerned felt there was something "off" about him that was never discussed. George's widowed mother Betty is losing her health and her mind in her early 90s and George comes home with a hidden agenda: to try to place her into assisted living in Paris ("Places like Paris are vanishing"). Their every moment together dredges up memories of Betty's married life, George's unsuccessful attempts to be the puzzle piece that fits into his small town and his ancestry, his father, his grandparents, his teachers, his school days. George and Betty are soldered together in a final dance as they struggle to maintain her routines that can no longer hold. George: "I think people who have always felt okay in the world will never understand those of us who haven't." This amazing narrative will open a brand new unimagined world to the reader and hopefully, in real life, a well deserved sense of accomplishment to George. Highly recommended for both the inner family saga and an outside Midwestern world common in fiction but rare in this most genuine of memoirs.
    • 4/5
      George Hodgman's memoir is mainly that of a 40-something gay man who leaves Manhattan to return to his small town home of Paris, Missouri to care for his 90+ year old mother, Betty. Betty is becoming more and more feeble and seems to be in the beginning stages of dementia, constantly asking George questions like "What's the capital of Portugal?" and "What's the name of that drink we drink at Christmas?" It's a very moving story of a man who always longed for an understanding that his parents were just not able to give, yet who realizes that they loved him and did the best they could.The episodes George relates, both from his past and from his years of caring for Betty, are told with both affection and humor. He regrets never sharing with his parents the truth about his own sexuality and his struggles with addiction--but that's just the way it was back then. As many times as George assures his mother that he will never leave her, that he will stay with her until the very end, Betty still fears being left to die on her own. But at one point, she finally breaks down her guard and thanks George for taking good care of her.I found the memoir interesting, particularly because I lived in central Missouri for six years, and although I never visited Paris, I was familiar with many of the other communities mentioned (Booneville, Moberly, Mexico, and Columbia, where George frequents Lakota Coffee while his mom has her hair cut at the Waikiki Hair Salon. Bettyville is a poignant memoir of a fading mother and of her son's regrets and triumphs.
    • 4/5
      As people age, they often need more care, especially if they want to continue to live in their own home. Communities and families used to rally around the elderly. Now those homely, caring communities are dying and families are spread all over the country. Options are limited for the aging. There's assisted living, home care, bringing an elderly relative into your own home, or moving in with them. None of the options are easy. For George Hodgman, the right answer for his mother was for her only son to move back from New York City to tiny Paris, Missouri to take care of the once indomitable but now failing Betty. As he cares for his mother, Hodgman tells of the life she lived, capturing the disappearing way of life in their small town. He interweaves his own recollections of the past in with hers, writing honestly of his feeling of being different, his long unacknowledged homosexuality, his drug addiction, and the low self worth he camouflages with humor. The Betty that Hodgman is caring for is very frequently not the Betty he remembers from his childhood. That younger Betty was vibrant and active and a vital part of her community. The Betty of ninety plus years is still colorful and can be a pistol, but she is also sad and stubborn as those things that once defined her become too hard for her anymore. Hodgman captures perfectly the repetitive arguments about seemingly petty things that pepper life with an aged parent and the poignancy of these small battles over things like wanting to wear tatty sandals everyday because that is one area in which the elderly Betty can still exercise some control. Reflecting on his own life and what he is or is not losing by choosing to stay with Betty, Hodgman has the chance to reflect on his relationship with parents and make an exploration into himself, who he has been, and who he has fought to become. As a gay man growing up in a small town, he knew he was different and he long felt like a disappointment to his parents. Uncomfortable with his sexuality, he was as silent on the subject as they were. He learned to be self-effacing in a funny way as a way to combat his social awkwardness and because he didn't necessarily like who he was. And while it would have been easy to blame his parents for this because of their upbringing and beliefs, he doesn't do that. In fact, this beautiful memoir shows a lot of love, undemonstrative perhaps, but love nonetheless. The narrative is made up of non-linear remembrances as he returns to different times in Betty's or his own past, weaving them adroitly amongst the present of taking care of Betty. The memoir is very personal in that he opens up his own truest self in it but it is also universal and recognizable for anyone who has cared for an elderly relative, felt different, struggled with meeting people, etc. Hodgman drops some very entertaining and witty bits into the book, which mitigates some of the heartbreaking truths about getting old. The respect he shows his mother even as she drives him round the bend is lovely and moving. His revelations about himself are candid and there's a strong vein of nostalgia, even though he didn't, and still doesn't always, find complete acceptance for who he is in the town or in his extended family. An exquisite tale of family ties, love, and aging, this is a wonderful and personal journey back home, back to the mother he loves and we are lucky to be along for the ride.