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Aug
06
Blog Tour Book Review: The Patron Saint of Used Cars and Second Chances by Mark Millhone
2009 at 9am Posted by Rebecca Joines Schinsky
Published July 7, 2009 by Rodale Books
Mark Millhone was starting to feel like a founding member of the “tragedy-of-the-month club.” It started when he and his wife celebrated the birth of their second son, but the party was cut short by the discovery of potentially fatal birth defects. Then Millhone’s father was diagnosed with cancer. Then his mother died. And if that weren’t enough—all in the course of nine short months, mind you—his marriage started to crumble.
Millhone’s wife Rose, a successful businesswoman and the family breadwinner, rarely left her bedroom anymore and soothed her anxieties with online shopping. He stayed up late into the night cruising for used cars on eBayMotors, which “was like online porn you could tak about around the water cooler the next day.” One night, he found the perfect car, a 1994 BMW 740i in Orient Blue Metallic. Now, I have no idea what makes this car so special, for Millhone, it represented the opportunity to start over.
It was more than car lust, more than early-onset midlife crisis—this car became my Holy Grail, my Field of Dreams, my prayer to Saint eBay, patron saint of used cars and second chances, that my family could emerge from our time of trial like new. What happened to that brave couple Rose and I used to be, who wagered our lives on the fleeting magic of our first kiss? How could I find my way back to them? As I stared at this car on eBay, a voice in my head told me:
“If you drive it, you will know.”
So Millhone bids on the car and wins it, and after he breaks the news to Rose (who, as you can imagine, is none too pleased), he plans a trip to Dallas to pick it up and enlists his father to make the drive back to New York with him. It sounds like a good idea, except that Millhone and his father have never been close or had much to talk about, so the prospect of spending several days on the road together brings a high awkwardness factor. But they do it anyway.
The Patron Saint of Used Cars and Second Chances is Millhone’s chronicle of his journey back to life and his reflections on marriage, fatherhood, and family. It is at turns cringe-inducing, laugh-out-loud funny, depressing, and ultimately hopeful. Millhone’s life is far from perfect, but he refuses to give up. He takes brave steps to confront his personal issues and the problems in his marriage and to support his wife in doing the same.
Like his life, the book is also not quite perfect. The whole my-life-fell-apart-and-I-wrote-a-book-about-it thing is becoming a bit overdone in my eyes, but Patron Saint is a quick, well-balanced read that fans of humorous memoirs and wry humor will find enjoyable. 3.5 out of 5.
Visit Mark Millhone’s website to learn more.
I like humorous memoirs and wry humor, so this may well be the book for me.
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