Keeping with the oddball tradition of Memoirs That Have Very Long Subtitles, Sheepish is subtitled "Two Women, Fifty Sheep, and Enough Wool to Save the Planet." I found myself spending a surprising amount of time ruminating (sorry) over that last bit. At the beginning of Sheepish, we learn that Friend and her wife are raising their flock for meat, and essentially selling their fleece for scrap. As the chapter essays progress, Friend becomes more enamored of the many eco-friendly aspects of wool, and better uses for it (both financially and ecologically) than shipping their fleece off for use in carpets.
But at the same time, Friend also has, shall we say, an uneasy relationship with the topic of hand-spinning and knitting. Friend seems oddly blind to the fact that this market is clearly willing to pay top dollar for fleeces, and is one of the most lucrative and popular hobbies in North America. Knitters and spinners have to literally beg her to sell some of her fleeces, and spend hours dyeing the fleece and sending it back to her in an attempt to convince her to start selling it.
Part of her reluctance is due to her antipathy towards knitters and those she dubs "fiber freaks." Or maybe this is just a tongue-in-cheek pose? Because she does have several knitter friends, and learns to spin, and even falls in love with a particular colorway. But it's an odd pose, and I kept coming back to her snide comments about knitters, and trying (as a knitter and fiber freak myself) not to take it personally. It kind of hampered my enjoyment of the book, to say the least.
I gather that Friend is also a blogger, which made sense of a problem I had noticed as I read. It's a popular trend, to have bloggers write memoirs. But it is a rare author who can pull this off. (Only one so far, if you ask me.) More often what you get is a sense of abstraction, of distance from the events being described.
Being both a blogger and a writer, I have Theories About This, of course. One is that the blogger has already served up the meat of the story on the blog and wants to dish up something a little different. Another is that the author is reluctant to expose too much of themselves, as your blog audience is far more "present" than the audience of a book. And finally, that perhaps the very act of blogging tends to make you feel a step removed from your own experiences - that sense of being a recorder, rather than a participant.
Since I have noticed it in authors as high profile as Stephanie Pearl-McPhee and Adrienne Martini, so obviously Friend is in good company. Plus, sheeps! It's a fun read, don't get me wrong. I just found it a little rocky in some aspects.