Anybody Can Do Anything by Betty MacDonald

I suppose 10,000 is still a smallish place, but I live in a village of about 150 people, so everything’s relative. I don’t know what it was in the mid-century, but I rather got the impression from the book that it was a few hundred. Her daughters make a proper appearance here, having been mysteriously absent from her previous memoir, and join in the family’s amiability and ineptitude.Īs for Vashon Island – I was rather surprised to learn, from Wikipedia, that the population is over 10,000. It’s so fun, for instance, to read about her family’s attempts to manoeuvre a washing machine by boat. The most appalling character seems to be her angry and bellicose dog Tudor. In MacDonald’s writing, though, the incident is funny rather than traumatic – with just that dark edge to it to set it off. There is a feeling of unity on the island, but the odd fly in the ointment – such as the woman who palms off her (many) children on anybody who’ll house and feed them, then makes out later that she has been horribly offended and abused by said person. She describes her difficulties and obstacles extremely amusingly, but moving to an island that is often inaccessible, and to a house that doesn’t have a road leading to it, is hardly conducive to ease.Īs in all the other books, MacDonald encounters any number of odd characters. MacDonald does seem to make a rod for her own back. As always (always!) MacDonald meanders around vagaries connected with the topic before getting into the topic proper – but ultimately they decide that they can’t live in Seattle or the surrounding suburbs, but could make a home for themselves on one of the islands, No chicken farms or TB wards in this one – rather, it documents MacDonald moving to Vashon Island with her new husband, Donald MacDonald.

And it’s just as enjoyable as the others, even if Anybody Can Do Anything remains my favourite of the series. The final of the Betty MacDonald audiobooks from Post-Hypnotic Press is 1955’s Onions in the Stew – the fourth of her four autobiographical books.

Anybody Can Do Anything by Betty MacDonald