Review: 'Funny Farm,' by Laurie Zaleski

I was trying to explain the gist of Laurie Zaleski's memoir, "Funny Farm," to my husband the other day, and as I spoke I realized that I was making it sound dire. Father is sociopathically abusive; mom and three small children flee, set up housekeeping in an unheated shack deep in the woods; mom takes on multiple menial jobs; dad tracks down the family and sneaks over repeatedly to cut the power lines, slash the tires, kill the dogs, shoot the horse.

But wait! This book is charming, funny, inspiring and hugely entertaining. ("Yeah, right," says my husband. But it is.)

Once established in their ramshackle home, Laurie's mother, Annie, starts bringing home animals from the humane society where she cleans cages. "Look what followed me home," she'd say, walking in the door with a skunk, or a goat, or a sheep. "Can I keep him?"

Zaleski's memoir hops around in time from childhood to young womanhood to the present, which keeps the dire stuff manageable — we read about the sociopathic dad but only in small bits. Much of the book is about the animals that first Annie, and then Laurie, rescue — dogs that are going to be put down, chickens that escaped the slaughterhouse, horses, pigs, geese, rabbits. (Laurie now runs a big nonprofit animal rescue in New Jersey called Funny Farm, funnfarmrescue.org.)

She writes about the connections the animals forge with the humans and with each other — the duck that befriends the blind kitten, for instance, or the llama and the mini-donkey, who are inseparable.

Annie and Laurie both have a lot of grit, chutzpah and energy, and this book is an ebullient and often funny read. Yes, it covers tough ground, but the women's pluck more than makes up for the sadness. That, and, of course, all those wonderful animals.

Funny Farm
By: Laurie Zaleski.
Publisher: St. Martin's Press, 244 pages, $27.99.