Christie Nicholls

Christie Nicholls is pretty funny … sometimes. Her book is split into four sections: her travels abroad (mostly as a child as her father was an oceanographer), jobs, family events, and boyfriends. The first section was strongest and the last was weakest. The summer is Brazil with das hund (German Shepherd) was very funny as was her stand-up routine is Sweden, where she introduced her mother in Swedish and told audience her mother was horny. I liked the value of anything at Marshalls was the difference between the "usually sells for price" and the price at which it was purchased. The section about caring for her MomMom with Alzheimer's was very touching and sometimes amusing, and I was more depressed than anything about her family's drinking exploits.… (mehr)

Driven by its faith in the transformative power of humor, Elephants in my Room is a lighthearted personal collection.

Christie Nicholls’s Elephants in my Room is a quirky collection of personal stories.

First focused on travel with family, the book opens with a story about a childhood obsession with a dog, Ferdinand, during a summer stay in Brazil; it milks humor from zany childhood logic. Next follow stories about brushing up against the cultural divide between a fun-loving American family and staid Brits during a family wedding in England; there’s also an element of stand-up comedy to Nicholls’s experiences as a non-native speaker in Sweden.

The book’s second section focuses on odd jobs and shares a variety of less-than-successful efforts to earn money. These include babysitting brats, working at a deceitful call center, waiting tables, and dog walking. They are followed by tributes to people who’ve passed, entries that highlight formative experiences while paying homage to influential people, including grandparents and a piano teacher. Misadventures in love close the book. Family coping mechanisms bind the material, including the liberal uses of alcohol, humor, and swearing.

A hilarious story about renting a manual transmission car in Iceland despite having little experience driving a stick shift produces laugh-out-loud moments. Such moments are balanced by poignant accounts, such as of losing a grandmother to Alzheimer’s, and another about overcoming fear of a grandfather to forge a stronger bond. Elsewhere, tones vacillate; a story about a teacher who lives with eighteen cats is ripe for humor, but is uneven, both earnest and flippant. Expletives and sudden cynicism distract from otherwise touching material; some attempts at humor are strained. Throwaway jokes, along with the book’s excess verbiage, become a point of distraction; they blunt the impact of scenes.

Scenes are not always set up with enough details to invite the audience into their actions, resulting in a sense that being there was necessary to understanding what happened. At other times, descriptions and recalled conversations help to convey how Nicholls overcame awkward situations and growing pains, though the ultimate chronology of events is unclear. Some entries are disjointed within the book as a whole.

Driven by a belief that comedy enables people to “recycle painful energy into something as inexplicably brilliant as a big, full-bodied belly laugh,” Elephants in my Room is a lighthearted personal collection that muses on past struggles—and the lessons learned from them.

Reviewed by Wendy Hinman for Foreword Reviews
March 21, 2020… (mehr)

Funny. Laugh out loud funny. I stayed up late to finish this book then read this book in bed and woke up my husband laughing out loud. I fell in love with Ferdinand. I laughed until I had tears in my eyes reading about the English wedding. I did not know you can be locked into an English pun and drink all night. My wanderings in England were so staid. Driving in Iceland? I was breathless from laughing. Visiting grandparents in Florida? Boy, could I relate. I did that too and now I can laugh about it. Did all grandparents in Florida have that same couch? I enjoyed reading about her dancer mother, oceanographer father, and her grandparents. Especially her grandparents. I spent a lot of time with my grandparents. And who takes up Swedish in college? These experiences and more are the hilarious adventures of the author coming of age through the lens of a true comedian. I was given the opportunity to read this book and get some real belly laughs by Netgalley and the publisher in exchange for a review.… (mehr)