Sea Monkeys: A Memory Book
The author of four ingeniously original novels, including the acclaimed Reverend America (2012), Saknussemm is in his element here, bending his offbeat prose around his boyhood recollections to create a distinctive autobiography. Growing up in the Bay Area during the post-Eisenhower 1960s, Saknussemm was raised by an eccentric cast of role models, including an aunt with a prosthetic arm, a mirthful minister father, and a resourceful older sister responsible for their dominating their grade school’s Halloween contests. An abundance of colorful personalities and captivating details such as those thread through a narrative that is more kaleidoscopic than chronological. There’s Mrs. Maury, a teacher who inappropriately pampered Saknussemm as a substitute for her dead son, his sister’s ear-mutilating accident on a Shetland pony, his father’s unwitting joke-telling to a bear while camping. Fans of Saknussemm’s inventive story lines may be disappointed by this plotless sifting through random memories, but a wealth of quirky anecdotes and descriptions of even quirkier true-life characters keep this memoir as engaging as any of Saknussemm’s novels. --Carl Hays