She Got Up Off the Couch

In her new memoir, She Got Up Off the Couch, Haven Kimmel dispenses more of the same literary Prozac that made a best-seller of 2001’s A Girl Named Zippy — small-town stories that hardly need a point to wring a smile from the most cynical city folks. Even so, she does have a point. Despite the life-affirming wonder with which she recounts her tween years in Mooreland, Ind., not all was well in the Kimmel household. When her Christian homebody mom finally gets up off her couch to take the College-Level Examination Program test, she forges a new life that her traditional blue-collar husband can’t quite handle. And Kimmel is at her best when things get more complicated toward the bittersweet end, as Zippy learns you can be happy and profoundly sad at the same time.