Title: Smell the Raindrops
Author: B.A. Austin
Publisher: Crescendo Press; 1st edition
ASIN: B015HQE0SY
Pages: 200
Genre: Memoir
Reviewed by: David Allen
Hollywood Book Reviews
Author Bethany Ann Austin is a classic Southern belle, growing up in the lap of luxury in Memphis, Tennessee, who goes to the best schools, thanks to her hard-driving dad’s very successful auto dealerships. Bethany can never do enough to please him.
She has two brothers; one is a surrogate father figure; the other is more like her best friend. Her mother, remote, emotionally unavailable at best, ends up taking to drinking. Alcoholism – “funny breath,” as she puts it – appears again and again as a leitmotiv for Austin’s personal struggle. Alcoholism also explains the premature deaths of close family members from alcohol-related diseases.
The author learns that victories for ‘minority’ civil rights are actually victories for all. B.A. Austin demonstrates this page after page in this beautifully crafted memoir of her life on “3 coasts” -the Mississippi, the Atlantic, and the Pacific. Her next stop is college, in New England, presumably Maine. College becomes Bethany’s crossroads; it is from here she establishes herself as an art historian, a wife (times two, as it turns out), an activist, and a mother. Recall that Austin’s mother was cold, detached, later on in life alcoholic. Her father was not only alcoholic, but was a certifiable workaholic as well. Which hidden springs did Bethany have to tap into in order to surfeit her children with love?
The answer is, “No” hidden springs. The answer is Karine, Bethany Ann’s awesome African-American nanny. Karine, and her family, and the progress of the Civil Rights movement during those years in America, are the other major concerns of this well written, ultimately moving, ultimately honest saga of where we’ve been these past hundred years. Karine is Bethany’s source of wisdom and unconditional love; Karine is the fount of good parenting Bethany always needed.
The scenario of loving nanny vs. ditzy parents is nearly but not quite overdone here. This avatar of Butterfly McQueen is somehow convincing. Not only does nanny Karine dispense great advice and great hugs, but she becomes an almost shamanic presence throughout the remainder of Smell the Raindrops, which you should read if you want to find out what happens next.