A gay magazine editor and writer's account of how he returned home to the Midwest from New York to care for his aging mother.Hodgman never dreamed he would return home to Paris, Missouri, to become his 90-year-old mother Betty's "care inflictor." But the lonely life he led in New York City, "lingering between the white spaces of copy, trying to get the work perfect," had soured; more than that, he was now unemployed. And Betty, who refused to enter an assisted living facility, could not continue living alone. Hodgman watched his mother confront her increasing confusion and physical fragility with dread. Inevitably, they bickered and fussed, but the author knew that Betty represented the home he was never able to establish for himself, just as Betty knew her son was her only steady source of support. Confronted on a daily basis with reminders of his past, Hodgman reviewed his life with both parents. Betty and his father could never quite accept that he was gay, and they were content with their lives and the simplicity of Paris. It was the author who was never happy with who he was and who felt a perpetual need to make up for being different by trying to do better. That struggle would lead him to a high-status, high-pressure job at Vanity Fair. But at what should have been the pinnacle of his career, he gave his life over to drugs and the Fire Island gay party scene. Hodgman's recoverynot just from substance abuse, but also from old patterns of emotional disconnectionwould take years. But when he returned to Paris, it was with a greater acceptance of who he was: not the son Betty might have wanted or expected, but the son who would see her through the "strange days" of her final years of life. Movingly honest, at times droll, and ultimately poignant. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Big-time magazine editor leaves New York City to care for his ailing yet feisty mother in their old-timey Midwestern hometown. The premise sounds like fodder for a laugh-track sitcom. Hodgman's gorgeously constructed memoir, however, couldn't be further from a pat Hollywood confection. In "Bettyville," Hodgman vividly depicts Paris, Mo., pop. 1,246, a small town easing into obsolescence. Against this backdrop, he creates an unforgettable portrait of his mother, Betty - a strong-willed nonagenarian struggling against the slow-motion breakdown of her mind and body. Hodgman evokes her with wit and tenderness, gently mocking her tendency to eat "enough for a camp of lumberjacks in the Maine woods" or her certainty that she "has not had what she considers a successful hair appointment since around 1945." Even as they drive each other crazy, their mutual affection is ever-present: "'You're my buddy,' I tell her. 'Am I?' she asks. 'You know I wouldn't want just another damn sweet old lady,' I say." A bundle of contradictions, Betty is both curmudgeonly and compassionate; an irreverent straight-talker who, along with her husband, Big George, can't bring herself to acknowledge - much less accept - her son's sexuality. With bracing honesty, Hodgman eloquently chronicles the devastating psychic toll of this silence: He struggles to open up to his romantic partners, and later falls into substance abuse. "Where do the hidden things go? Not away. Nothing goes away," Hodgman writes. "Shame is inventive," he recalls reading in a book. "Shame can make a joke. It can reach for a bottle. It can trip you up when you don't even know it is there." Despite his travails, Hodgman writes without an ounce of self-pity or desire for retribution. "I can never be a person who has not made mistakes," he says. "But I can be someone honest who has lived through them: one of those who look you square in the eye and say, 'This is how it has been, and it is O.K.'" NOELLE HOWEY is the author of the memoir "Dress Codes: Of Three Girlhoods - My Mother's, My Father's, and Mine."

Hodgman's memoir chronicles his return home to care for his mother in the small Missouri town where he grew up. His relocation provides the veteran book editor and writer an opportunity for re-evaluating his life while assuming care of Betty, his ailing, widowed, and willful 90-year-old mother. Hodgman's narrative alternates between describing the joys and stresses of his daily caretaking tasks, giving close analysis of his life growing up gay in a smalltown. Hodgman (Sixty Years on the Turf) also chronicles his long struggle to understand and become comfortable in his own skin, ruminating over the decades his family muffled discussion of his sexuality. Hodgman attended college, then moved to New York at the beginning of the AIDS crisis, which greatly affected his view of the world. As Betty's health declines, Hodgman is buoyed by the friendships and familiarities provided by smalltown life. Hodgman includes a cast of characters from his hometown, as well as people he encountered professionally and romantically in New York. The author's continuous low-key humor infuses the memoir with refreshing levity, without diminishing the emotional toll of being the sole health-care provider to an elderly parent. This is an emotionally honest portrayal of a son's secrets and his unending devotion to his mother. (Mar.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

This is a superior memoir, written in a witty and episodic style, though at times it's heartbreak-ing. It's also, though just under 300 pages, an especially dense one, filled with a lifetime's worth of reflection and story after fascinating story. Starting out rather conventionally as the tale of a son's return home to rural Paris, MO, to take care of his ailing mother (the "Betty" of the title), the narrative slowly begins to delve into Hodgman's difficulties accepting himself for who he is, particularly as a gay man. Though his relationship with his mother is close it quickly becomes clear that his sexual orientation is just the most significant of many things that he and his family do not discuss. Hodgman is also very good at detailing how much rural America has changed, almost never for the better, in the last 30 years.VERDICT Readers from many backgrounds will be able to identify with the author because his book is really a plea for us to accept everybody for who they are, no matter what their story may be, or what kinds of lives they may lead. [See Prepub Alert, 9/21/14.] (c) Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Hodgman's mother, Betty, is fading, physically and mentally (she's in her nineties and lives alone, in the family home in Paris, Missouri). A single freelance book editor in NYC, Hodgman finds it easy to take his work and head home to be a caregiver. Once he arrives, however, he discovers nothing is easy not helping his mother navigate dressing, cooking, and a disappearing memory; not facing his past as a gay child and young adult in a small town; not deciphering love, parental and otherwise. The book is instantly engaging, as Hodgman has a wry sense of humor, one he uses to keep others at a distance. Yet the book is also devastatingly touching. Betty is one tough cookie, and she is crumbling. Hodgman as a young man came out around the same time AIDS did, complicating his already complicated feelings immeasurably. There's a lot for Hodgman to handle, yet he does, despite the urge to give in to his own sadness and his own former drug addiction. A tender, resolute look at a place, literal and figurative, baby boomers might find themselves.--Kinney, Eloise Copyright 2015 Booklist