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Rating: 
Summary: Believe the hype!
Review: Although most of the book (and the reviews) focus on the marvelous youthful adventures of Brett Leveridge's lovely mother, my favorite part of the book were Brett's personal essays. His observational stories add warmth to a genre that is very often overly sarcastic and bitter.
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Summary: Such a Nice Young Man!
Review: Brett Leveridge is a terrifically funny writer; his prose is at once witty and engaging, the tales he spins warmly evocative and unforgettable.
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Summary: 'Mother': Skirmishes After the Vote, but Before the Pill
Review: Brett Leveridge offers a generous portrait of the delights and dangers of dating, as seen through the wise (but not hard-bitten) eyes of a young woman in the 50's. The fact that this woman is his mother does not distract from his candid appraisals of the motives of men and women during their movie-going, dance-attending searches for companionship. He creates a remarkable movie in one's head, full of Beat poets, seducing at dawn; confident sons of preachers (whose version of 'going fast' involves way more than the moves of 'third base'); rough men, humbled by her beauty; shy men, sometimes encouraged too far. All these experiences tie in to Karen's ('Mother's') subtle construction of her dream man; the fidelity and kindness she shows to others during her dates become building blocks for the long-lasting fidelity of her only marriage. Leveridge's view of human nature in his Mother stories (and in his short essays) is tasteful and respectful, but not conservatively retrograde. Men who might have kept a stash of physique magazines and women who might have had their secret love in the WACS also have their role (an appropriate one, neither cruel nor cold) in this girl's journey to womanhood and marriage. This is the rare post-modern book that one could safely give to Mom or Dad, while feeling guilty about wanting to keep it for oneself. Play it safe -- buy two.
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Summary: A Slice of an American Life
Review: I picked up Brett Leveridge's new book Men My Mother Dated and thought to myself, "Now who would want to read a book filled with stories about the men someone's mother dated?" The answer is pretty evident once you begin reading these humorous and wonderfully written stories. It got me to thinking just what types of guys my own mom must have dated and of the different stories all of our mothers could tell regarding the finer points of dating. My favorite story had to be The Eddie Cantor Six in which Brett recounts the tale of his mother having dated six men who, over the course of two weeks, all took her to see The Eddie Cantor Story at a local movie theater. The rest of the stories or commentaries, if you will, are just as well written and some are laugh-out-loud hysterical! You simply cannot go wrong with this slim volume of essays by a man with a truly observant eye toward our current state of social affairs. You'll pick it up and won't want to put it down! Oh...and be sure to check out Brett's Website BRETTnews wherein you will have the opportunity to sign his Guest Book and be asked that all-important question - What Is Your Inseam.
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Summary: Me, Biased?
Review: OK, I've known Brett Leveridge for years, and have admired his writing for ages. I've followed his radio commentator's career with interest, as well as...let us be honest...tinges of jealousy. And why not? Brett's writing is so deceptively simple, I find myself thinking, studying, scheming. It was in this grumpily calculating spirit that I watched him write this book and invite me to a reading from it, little dreaming, I suppose what evil lurked in my heart. And damned if he didn't do it again, that Brett-like thing his writing does: within minutes of his starting to read a 'Men My Mother Dated' story, the one where his mom gets into a 'hair pulling, eye-gouging catfight, the first such row mom had ever been involved in,' I was laughing helplessly, as Brett went on to add, straightfaced, that mom's arrest ('her first') landed her in jail over night until her date 'took up a collection around the fraternity house and posted bail the next morning.' As always, Brett manages to create his own little world, marked by mom's cheerful resiliance and his own sly humor. Does he make this stuff up? It feels like fiction but it's so seamless that the only possible reaction is to relax and enjoy it. After the reading, I went home and read the second half of the book, the 'mostly true tales' of the title, in which Brett recounts a series of funny, sometimes touching vignettes from his life as a single man in New York. I found myself, again, admiring his honesty and essential generosity as a writer. I thought I knew Brett, who is, all competitive spirit aside, a great guy, but these stories revealed a whimsical side of him, of dating, of life in the city that are really magical. As he says in the disclaimer, they're 'mostly true', but there's a quality of infinite possibility he brings to the utterly commonplace, as in a story about waking up at 3 am because of street noise and realizing it's from the subtle sounds of four men tap dancing. Tap dancing! Only in Brett's world would a glance out the window reveal an elderly man 'relishing the opportunity to surrender, even in his limited fashion, to those same rhythms that the three younger men had marked with their feet, to perpetuate, in the pale glow of the late spring moon, what must surely now be, for him, several decades of dancing. His are slow and steady movements, long scraping sweeps of the foot, like a drummer using brushes instead of a stick, but they seem wonderfully economical after the feverish steps of the younger men...' Yes, this is a book of humor, but it's also a book about life's poignance and possibilities, and the tender gifts afforded by a look outside a window at 3 AM. In a world with a surfeit of hope, this book is a sweet talisman, and I'm glad I have it.
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Summary: You can judge a book by its cover!
Review: Okay, I have to admit that the only reason I picked up this book in the first place is because of all the handsome men on the cover. When I finally got around to reading it, I couldn't put it down! It's a very amusing, quick read. All I can say is that I wish my social life was half as active and entertaining as Mrs. Leveridge's! Wow, did she really share a sunrise with Jack Kerouac?
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