Book Review: The Magic of Ordinary

Lessons from a simple life sprinkled with magic dust

This was exactly the book I needed at the end of a pandemic year — a sweet story of growing up with siblings in a loving home where the father provides magic that turns ordinary events into extraordinary adventures.

As a memoir writer and reader, in recent times, I have been disappointed with bestsellers which fall into one of two categories — a celebrity tell-all of a dysfunctional present or confessions of a regular person who describes a dysfunctional past often involving addiction or trauma.

The former sells because of the celebrity’s public status, the latter because it is a well-crafted story with a generous publicity budget.

Gouty’s memoir does not fall into these categories. In fact, my initial impression in the early chapters — that it was a literary version of a TV show that I loved during the years I lived in the US, The Wonder Years — remained unchanged when I got to the end of the book.

Nostalgic ride to a simpler time

Vivid descriptions of a simple American childhood spent riding bicycles in a neighbourhood where kids spend time outdoors playing…