EVIDENCE OF INSANITY has an untamable spirit. It's the memoir of the highlights (and lowlights) of a spitfire of a woman raised in small town North Carolina circa 1960. It's told first-person in her voice with charm, verve and lots of personality. The characters and settings of each episode are rendered creatively and memorably.

I loved the childhood of her growing up as a young girl. She experiences serious travails as the adult world pummels her family, primarily by a cheatin', hard drinkin', mean but church-goin' father. Her hell-cat mother fights back and throws him out (an unconventional move then and there) and subjects the five children to poverty and humiliation. Some circumstances would make some readers cry with pity but Piner will have none of that. None of this can keep down the irrepressible spirit of the young girl. She recounts the tragi-comedy episodes and their characters with such daring and boldness you'll be glued to the page. She unleashes a wild humor and emulates her feisty, independent mother as she turns the travails into adventures. She is quite happy not being molded into a "normal" (boring!) family.

There's some wicked funny stuff here. The ghost in the bedroom is a riot. Her mother rams her car into her husband's Cadillac when she sees him with another woman - giving all the denting details. Roller skates fly all over town when the rink her mother worked at is demolished in a hurricane. That's where crazy comes in. You know the kind of crazy you may call your friends when they do something outrageous for fun. Insane crazy. But Piner can also write expressively and skillfully as in the following quote.

"He [Daddy] knew I had been watching the butterfly, so he reached down, not a word was said, and snatched the butterfly out of the air by its wings....he pinned it to my hat, close to my right ear. It was still alive and struggling. He watched me a minute to see if I was going to cry or something. When all I did was give him what I hoped was an evil eye, he cussed me and stalked off....I got up, walked into the house and headed for the kitchen where it seemed Momma spent all her time. I got right in front of her. Daddy was half sprawled over the kitchen table cramming a piece of chicken down his gullet. I didn't say a word. I just glared at Momma, willing her to look down at me. When she did, she saw the butterfly, never doubting how it got pinned to my hat. She calmly reached down and unpinned it. It was dead by then, because there was no struggling coming from it. She looked me straight in the eye, turned and quietly dropped it in the trash. Her way of telling me to do something about something I could do something about and leave what I had no control over to her fine, competent hands. I was too young, too small. She, however, was tall enough to walk over to the kitchen table when Daddy was still feeding his face and..."

For me this book looks at life like one of those wild roller coaster rides. Up or down, there's never a dull moment with Carol Piner. I turned the pages eyes wide open, eager to see what was coming around the next bend.       Review by John Cooker. The image is the cover that I painted. She's Raven