My Dead Pets Are Interesting

This book of short essays by Lenore Zion is a demented and delirious delight. Her writing is almost all id, with the ego taking a back seat to an outpouring of thoughts, opinions, fantasies and actions that expose an unsettled and unsettling mind. Zion is a sharp, observant, craft-conscious storyteller who is not afraid to be blunt, daring, compassionate and unpredictable all in a single sentence.Among my favorite pieces (of which there are more than thirty individual essays to choose from) are:- “Nana Vs. the Vagrants” which pits the author and her siblings against both an unenthusiastic baby-sitting grandmother, as well as a casserole-pushing family of strangers;- “What I Did in My Room” about the revelatory nature of listening and dancing to Joni Mitchell;- “Tallywacker Karma With Weiner Vageener,” a childhood memory that is obscenely hilarious, with an ironic twist ending that brings the bad deeds of youth full circle;- “Beauty in the Eyes of a Fish” that combines smells with memory, and investigates a relationship that is neither fish nor fowl.With storytelling skills to give David Sedaris and Sandra Tsing Loh a run for their money, and her own unique perspective on a life askew, Zion has constructed a stimulating and satisfying ode to oddness. A terrific, engaging read.

"Beautiful Zion is bold: craning her elegant neck, flirting with her eyes, walking with dainty steps, tinkling her ankle bracelets." - Isaiah 3:16Look, I'm not a shrink by any means, just a brain-rattled misfit midnight psychiatric crisis guy -- but I can tell you that if somewhere in your memory banks there lies a figment of a night spent in a sponge-like King-sized bed at the Thunderbird Motel with your father who is determined to teach you about frugality - what this means is you were born to someday write an awesome, awesome book.The future is now!The best praise I can give any artist is this: You don't sound like anybody else but yourself.Lenore Zion is brave and crazy -- no doubt crazy -- but she doesn't camouflage her crazy the way so many writer-slash-mental health professionals do.The thing that I kept thinking while I read her collection of essays was: "This is Dr. Zion. A PhD. in psychology. Isn't she afraid that a patient could read this? A peer?" (Then I remembered. Lenore is a psychologist in L.A.)Even if you read five books a week, like I do -- you'll never read a book quite like this. Dead Pets is the best I've seen as to the reality of what mental health practitioners are really like -- Eccentrically creepy and sort of fascinating and gross -- wacky as a pack of cracked-out mallards flying over a Venom concert in the valleys of Vermont.There's a new sort of non-fiction these days - writing about the warped and fractured reality in our heads, where we spend our lives trying to figure out how many of our fears are reality and how many of them are tricks of the brain. That's Lenore's journey. And what you take away is that though she tries to convince you otherwise, there's probably a pretty quality person underneath all that crazy talk

In ten years time "My Dead Pets Are Interesting" will be considered one of the greatest memoirs or collections of personal essays ever published. This book is "A Walk in the Woods" funny. It is "Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs" funny. It is "Naked" funny. But it also acchieves more than any of those works. Lenore's existential dilema is a timeless one, she wrestles with the mundanity of her existence, with wanting to be a decent person, despite the fact that in many ways she is clearly not (at least in the way she would define the term), just like all of us. Zion is an admited compulsive liar, which makes it essentially impossible to be sure when the scenarios playing out are taking place in the real world, or simply within the author's admitedly overactive and depraved imagination. Buy this book. You won't regret it.

Although my own dead pets aren't that interesting , author Lenore zion's are. This collection had me constantly laughing out loud but that alone isn't what makes this collection superior. With striking honesty and obvious bluntness, she describes those moments and hidden thoughts most of us are too ashamed of or cowardly to admit we have. She has a gift of relating to her audience as she seems to be discovering her sentences at the same time we do. I love this book and I can't wait to see what she comes up with next.

This book met all of my expectations and then some! Lenore is a rare gem of honesty and insight into the things we think but cannot bring ourselves to say out loud. Hilarious, fun, and an absolute pleasure to read.

Zanily macabre, refreshingly irreverent, unimpeachably funny, Lenore Zion is living proof of Oscar Wilde's assertion that there are no dull subjects, only dull writers, because damn it, her dead pets are interesting.

Lenore Zion has a unique voice that places you firmly on her side as she recounts her experiences squaring off against a slew of advanced social awkwardnesses. With her endearing, confessional style, Zion makes these tales a joy to read. The author has a delightful sense of humor that always manages to catch you off guard (you'll be laughing out loud, no doubt), but never loses its poignancy. I was thrilled to discover this book, and I can't wait to devour more of Zion's work in the future.

I have to read this book in small sections because my body can only handle so much laughter. Its a must read, Lenore is zany, witty, and kinda weird, but it works!