When it came time to select a Guest Reviewer for Sarah Thyre"s Dark at the Roots, a debut memoir laced with plenty of dark humor, Haven Kimmel was at the top of our list. Her own debut, the groundbreaking memoir A Girl Named Zippy, offered readers an unforgettable coming-of-age story that sparkled with originality, heralding the arrival of a writer to watch. Check out Haven Kimmel"s review below of Sarah Thyre"s Dark at the Roots. Guest Reviewer: Haven Kimmel Haven Kimmel is the author of the bestselling memoir A Girl Named Zippy, and its sequel, She Got Up Off the Couch. Her novels include The Solace of Leaving Early and Something Rising (Light and Swift), and she is the author of the children"s book, Orville: A Dog Story. Her next novel, The Used World, will be published in September 2007. So much has been written, said, and expectorated about the memoir genre in the past five years there remains little to say. And it"s true, the memoirs worth reading are rare--the ones that jolt or enlighten or delight with craft. Sarah Thyer"s Dark At The Roots is a stand-out for countless reasons. Her sentences compel like electricity: the reader moves from one to the next as if being shocked, but pleasantly, or with the pathological love of the tongue for the toothache. Thank God I have this toothache, you think, because otherwise my life would be a pit of stupid. Her dialogue is dead-on (and having lived in both Mississippi and Louisiana I can tell you it isn"t easy to replicate and virtually everyone gets it wrong). She is shameless and unembarassable and she makes a foreign world so concrete you can feel the shag carpeting and smell the extinct shampoo. Thyer handles a shadowy relationship with her father with a grace that both reveals and conceals, simultaneously. Most of all, from beginning to end she remains as consistent a character as one looks for in fiction: she is the best friend you wish you"d had, and the girl your mother warned you about (as if those two things don"t always go hand in hand). My own sister recently said to me, as we were having a swinging contest at the park--I am 41 and she is 51--"I swing higher, I"m smarter and funnier than you, and people like me better." I can think of no better description for Sarah Thyer, or for her memoir, which was crafted with an edge razor-fine. She"s gifted enough to write anything: fiction, another memoir, pamphlets about the dangers of hitting electric lines with your Rototiller. I can"t wait for whatever comes next. --Haven Kimmel