Pathologies by Susan Olding, ppk $23.95
With books like Three Cups of Tea and Eat, Pray, Love continuing to top best-seller lists, and others like How to Lose Friends and Alienate People being made into Hollywood movies, it’s clear that the memoirs of seemingly ordinary people are turning into gold for publishers. Susan Olding’s Pathologies, published by Calgary’s small press Freehand Books, is such a memoir. Susan Olding is not a politician or a politician’s wife; she did not grow up in a war-torn country; and she does not have a celebrity sibling to exploit (yes, that was a shot at you, Christopher Ciccone). Nevertheless, Olding has stories to tell, and she tells them with such heartbreaking beauty that I was in tears by page 15. It’s not all sadness, however; Olding is witty, compassionate, and insightful, and her ability to turn the ordinary into the extraordinary makes for a thoroughly enjoyable read.
