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The Egg and I (Betty MacDonald Memoirs #1)

by Betty MacDonald

3.95 of 5 stars 3.95 · rating details · 2,814 ratings · 328 reviews

Reissue of this immortal, hilarious, and heartwarming classic about working a chicken farm in the Northwest.

Paperback, 288 pages

Published August 5th 1987 by Harper Perennial (first published 1945)

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Jun 07, 2012 Hannah rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2012-reads, humor

I'm giving this (a very generous) 2 stars due to the excellent scenic descriptions of the Washington state environment. I got a real sense of the beauty and bounty of the area and that's one thing I always enjoy about a book.

Otherwise, MaCDonald's brand of humor isn't one shared by me, and I found nothing remotely funny about her life on a chicken farm in the 1940's. There's a bitterness about her observations of "people-not-herself" that manifests itself as a mean-spirited bigotry that you ofte...more

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Sep 07, 2007 Lynn rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I have read Betty MacDonald's The Egg and I at least three times. The first
time I was about twelve, the second, maybe twenty-one
and the last time in the virtual dotage of sixty-two.

My ten year old self took this as a fabulous adventure
story and I wanted nothing more than to meet Gams and
the hyperactive grandma and eat a geoduck clam with
the MacDonalds.

At twenty-one, I laughed my head off. Being of an impractical
nature myself, I got anxious and then giggling at what
I took to be a hippies-in-the-w...more

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Jun 11, 2012 Angie rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Written in the 1940's by Betty MacDonald (of Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle fame), this book recounts her years as a newlywed on a chicken farm in Washington state. A city girl, it's not where she expected to end up.

The good: MacDonald is funny. Very funny. Yes, she pokes fun at her neighbors (the TV series about Ma and Pa Kettle was based on her book), but she has plenty of fun at her own expense as well. She's a skillful writer. Despite her comic tone, her personification of the mountains, for example, i...more

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Jul 13, 2008 Krista rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is a book I'd recommend to anyone. I first read it when I was in those awkward pre-teen years, and I'm not sure why I picked it up. But I ended up loving it, and I'm pretty sure I begged my parents to let me keep chickens, afterward. (They first tried to discourage me by telling me how much work it would be, and then when that didn't work, flat-out told me I couldn't have any. It was a sad day for me, but a wise decision for them.) In the more than 10 years since I'd read it, only the basic...more This is a book I'd recommend to anyone. I first read it when I was in those awkward pre-teen years, and I'm not sure why I picked it up. But I ended up loving it, and I'm pretty sure I begged my parents to let me keep chickens, afterward. (They first tried to discourage me by telling me how much work it would be, and then when that didn't work, flat-out told me I couldn't have any. It was a sad day for me, but a wise decision for them.) In the more than 10 years since I'd read it, only the basic plotline, (non-farming woman moves out into the boonies with her new husband to take up chicken farming,) and the phrase "Ladies and gentlemen, babies come from people's stomach holes!" have stuck with me.

The story is an only slightly-improved autobiographical account of Betty MacDonald's life as a chicken-farming farmwife. I think she changes names and lumps a few people together into conglomerate characters, but it's mostly accurate. In fact, it came about because her parents and siblings were so amused by the stories she told them in her visits and letters, that they begged her to turn it into a book. She did, and it became an instant hit, which then spawned a movie and a popular TV series.

You're unlikely to remember them, though, because the book came out in 1945. Which means you get some deliciously pioneer-y tales of the first time she saw paper money, the "heart medicine" she had to take when she swore, her two grandmas, Gammy, a vulgar outdoorsy woman, and DearGrandmother, an uptight, upright woman, and her upbringing among them all. The early-life chapter of the book is a joy to read--I couldn't stop laughing aloud and reading bits and pieces to anyone who was nearby. But the later chapters, though no less funny, are less dated--they're easy to follow, and it's possible that almost anything there could happen today.

I can't say enough good things about this book, really. It's amazing how she makes an experience so hard so funny, and even a little enviable. It's a story about a real person in real situations, who always manages to look at the bright side of things, and yet you don't feel any desire to strangle her. It's wholesome and hilarious and gives you a faint desire to raise chickens. Do yourself a favor--check it out. If you're not hooked by the first chapter, you're welcome to put it back down.

Also, I just learned that Betty MacDonald also wrote the Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle books. This book and those are completely different, but both fun, in their own ways. (less)

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Oct 30, 2007 Bonnie Gayle rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: fans of autobiographies and "roughing it" tales

Shelves: non-fiction, reviewed, library-books

Well, there are 2 groups of people I wouldn't recommend this book to: vegetarians/animal lovers, due to the realities written about of living on a farm, and especially a chicken farm, and people offended by racist Native American portrayals, due to the author's own racist opinions.
I can pretty much guarantee that if you don't fall into the first group, you most likely will fall into the second, so I'm not sure who to recommed it to. In fact, I myself threw down the book in disgust, and almost g...more Well, there are 2 groups of people I wouldn't recommend this book to: vegetarians/animal lovers, due to the realities written about of living on a farm, and especially a chicken farm, and people offended by racist Native American portrayals, due to the author's own racist opinions.
I can pretty much guarantee that if you don't fall into the first group, you most likely will fall into the second, so I'm not sure who to recommed it to. In fact, I myself threw down the book in disgust, and almost gave it up completely, when I read the last paragraph of the chapter titled "Bow and Arrow", in which she states that it's a good thing that we took this beautiful country away from "the braves", because Hiawatha they ain't. At this point, you might be wondering why I gave it 3 stars, and in fact would give it 3.5 if I could. Well, I'll get into that after a summarize the plot.

This is an autobiographical story written in 1945 by the author of the Miss Piggle Wiggle series. Betty marries a man named Bob, whose job has something to do with numbers and money. She's not sure exactly what. Soon after they marry, Bob begins dreaming of running a chicken farm. Betty's mother gave her the advice, when she was growing up, that whatever your husband wants to do, say yes, because if they are happy with their profession, you are happy. This worked well for Betty's mom, who was the adventurous sort, but it does not turn out so well for Betty, because Bob moves them to the mountains of Vashon Island (in Washington) to a farm with no running water, no electricity, and no neigbbors within 4 miles, or town within 20. The book takes place during their first year on the farm, through trials and tribulations, learning and growing, good times and bad, but always with a sense of humor, and a sense that despite Betty's grumbles, she will make it work.

Okay, so for the good. Like I mentioned, the book is written with a great deal of humor. This does not mean that Betty is thrilled with what her life is like now. In fact, her neighbors are shocked by her for 2 reasons: she reads, and she says no to her husband. At some points, I wished she would tell him no more often, since it seems like she is the only one taking care of the darn chickens, but she was pretty progressive for the time, in that aspect, I guess.
Another good part are the descriptions. She describes her actions, and especially her surroundings remarkably well. Part of it is that she personifies nature, which normally is not recommended, but she does it to perfection, hilariously so. She also describes her neighbors so well, that if you were to meet Maw and Paw Kettle somehow, you would feel like you knew them. She sometimes is...okay, quite often is biting in her descriptions of her neigbors, which is odd, because they are real people, but I guess she figures it's okay because they can't read. Hmmmmm...

I have to mention another bad thing, which is her complete lack of transitions. She begins a chapter by listing, for example, "all the good things about living this way were the food, the views, ...and so on, and would then go on to write about the food. All of a sudden, bam, a paragraph will begin, "The views..." and you're thrown for a second, until you realize, okay she's just going to jump from one item on the list to the next, transitionless. It took a while to get used to.

There you have it. The good and the bad. I'll leave it up to you to decide which outweighs which in your mind.(less)

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Mar 06, 2008 Lee Anne rated it 4 of 5 stars

The author of the Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle series also wrote several memoirs, this being the most famous. It's the book that introduced Ma and Pa Kettle to the world. Read through today's eyes, it's so horribly racist regarding Native Americans that I can't recommend it in my job, but it's a funny and warm book regardless. I guess that's like saying, "It's a great story, minus the Klan meetings"--it's not that bad, but I can't set the racism aside, and...I don't know. I can't imagine following my newl...more

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Mar 24, 2009 Sarah rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Thought this was hysterical. Autobiographical account of living on an egg farm in a hill-billy part of Washington. NOT PC. Humor a little down on self sometimes, like Charlie Brown. Funny and interesting snapshot of life in the 1920/1930's in the back woods.

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Mar 12, 2013 Zora rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: bad-couldn-t-finish

While the racism here is troubling, as others reviewing here have said, in this 1945 "light comedy" nonfiction, the sexism horrified me more. This is the bitterly funny (and not so funny) autobiography of a woman who has signed up for a form a marital slavery to a wannabe chicken farmer, in which the husband works her to exhaustion and insults her while doing so, and she increasingly accepts that as what she deserves/the best she can get, while displacing her unexpressed anger about it outward t...more

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Mar 04, 2013 Anne rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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Nov 11, 2012 Dempse Kb rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I loved the movie version of this book when I was young. We are introduced to Betty and Bob, and their crazy neighbors, including Ma and Pa Kettle who are even crazier than they were in the movie!

'The Egg and I' is Betty MacDonald's auto-biography of a period of time when she lived with her husband as a reluctant egg farmer in the wild North West.

Her writing style is humorous and self deprecating. It is reminiscent of Dave Barry and Erma Bombeck, but of course she was first!

It is also similar...more

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Aug 09, 2012 Kyla rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Straight up and first, there are horrific slurs and bigotry about Native Americans in this book. This is acknowledged in the daughter's preface but upon reflection, I am glad they didn't cut out these parts. It feels important to me to represent the way people really talked about minorities in a breezy, light-hearted "aren't they TERRIBLE way" - it's somehow more chilling, not less.
But the rest of this book - oh it's so cozy. I picked up this copy on the Olympic Peninsula where only my driving...more

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Jun 05, 2012 Sarah rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

What a hilarious memoir of life as a newlywed in the 30s in the rural northwest! Betty McDonald's book chronicles what amounts to her life from being child growing up learning ballet and how to be a "lady" (really a short prequal to the rest of this book) to her life as a newly wed learning to be a chicken farmer's wife. She married a salesman who wanted to become a chicken farmer, so, on her mother's advice to let her husband do what excited him for a living, she agreed to move to a rundown far...more

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Feb 14, 2012 Tig rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I should have adored this - I have loved all of Betty Macdonald's other books and I've been saving this one up as a treat. But it just didn't do it for me. There seemed much more mean-spiritness than in her other books. Of course her spikey, pointed observations are what make her writing so delightful, but barbed humour only works well when one delights in the shafts because they're aimed at a shared and justified target. And here I found myself completely out of harmony with her. There's the ob...more I should have adored this - I have loved all of Betty Macdonald's other books and I've been saving this one up as a treat. But it just didn't do it for me. There seemed much more mean-spiritness than in her other books. Of course her spikey, pointed observations are what make her writing so delightful, but barbed humour only works well when one delights in the shafts because they're aimed at a shared and justified target. And here I found myself completely out of harmony with her. There's the obvious atrocious racism - I'll pass over that because it's been said many times before that it's a serious flaw, possibly an unforgiveable flaw in the book (though I found interesting the idea that what she was really objecting to was the sexism). What I disliked as much as the racism, though, was the harping on about the filthiness and unappealing qualities of almost every local person she encountered. This woman has serious dirt issues, in that the whole subject terrifies her and that means we part company (I have an active dislike of obsessing over cleanliness and think a tidy house is often the sign of a bored mind). If someone has the courtesy to bring me a whole side of perfectly cooked smoked salmon, and cuts me a slice, the last thing I'm going to be writing about is how the sight of his hands revolted me: I will be enthusing about the qualities of sharing and community. BM can't stop mentioning everyone's filthy appearance, grubby, messy yards and unattractive children. She meets a woman on the shore who says it was such a nice day, she had to leave the housework and bring her children out to clam dig. Instead of being pleased to find a kindred spirit, BM immediately sets in to comment on the woman's dusty braids, holey trousers, filthy children who are all 'drooling idiots' (*really* offensive). I just found it so unpleasant - this is a farming community for heaven's sake: of course people have dirty clothes. I suppose in the end all I'm saying is her schtick isn't mine and I found the book sneery. I also get irritated by people who don't raise objections or negotiate with their partners when things seem unfair but then do that passive aggressive thing of letting everyone around know what a tough time they're having. I don't blame her for moaning about the farming - anyone would - but she makes sure we know every time her husband fails her in some way or forces her to do something she doesn't want. Either support him or ship out, I'd say (and I gather she shipped out, which seemed a very good idea to me). I wonder if part of the success of this book is that it taps into the American pioneer dream in a way that brings it closer for your average city type ie sassy, snappy city girl used to all mod cons takes on Ma Ingalls' role and gives us her sharp-eyed take on it? It clearly is a long-time favourite of many readers. Well, I'm not American, I don't obsess over hygiene and I live in a rural community where acceptance and warmth is an important part of getting along, and clearly none of those things helped. I wonder if I like the Plague and I so much because, being set in the sterile conditions of a hospital, it was not possible for BM to get bitchy over dirt? But I also think in that, and in Onions in the Stew she finds a happier balance of enjoying the eccentric types around her and finding common ground with some, while also mercilessly skewering pretension and meanness. Here, too many of her targets seemed deserving of a little more understanding. I did like the mountains, I must say, and the descriptions of the food (but oh, how she rubbed in it that SHE was a gourmet and everyone else ate atrociously). (less)

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Sep 29, 2011 Vasha7 rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Betty MacDonald grew up middle-class and urbanized, learning to play the piano, draw, and dance. She wished repeatedly for more practical skills after she married a man whose greatest dream was to start a chicken farm. But the social world she was plunged into after they moved to a remote area of the Pacific Northwest, during the 1930s, was an even greater shock.

This book seems to be something of an outgrowth of the letters MacDonald wrote home to her family -- the reading audience would certai...more

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Mar 19, 2011 Susan Lynn rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

For years when I was young and bored during summer vacation, my mother tried to get me to read her copy of The Egg and I. I turned my nose up and went outdoors. Such is life when you live near a lake.

I love simple books that talk about every day life challenges written with a clever voice and great humor. In the book, Betty talks about her adventures as a novice farmer who moved into the mountains of Washington state to eek out a living during the Depression years. If you love animals and plant...more

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Jul 07, 2010 Nancy rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

ne of the funniest books ever written, The Egg and I is all the more remarkable because it sounds completely contemporary, even though it was written more than 50 years ago and describes events that took place more than 70 years ago. MacDonald had a relentlessly clear eye, a sharp, witty writing style and in her own way was as liberated as was possible for her time (she was divorced and a single mother when such things were considered heinous). And I'd like to say one thing: although she does wr...more

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Apr 15, 2010 Tony rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: biography

MacDonald, Betty. THE EGG AND I. (1945). ****. A friend of mine let me know that he had just read the second volume of this memoir, this title being part one. I didn’t know that there was a second volume (and even a third). In fact, although I know I have seen the film made from the book starring Claudet Colbert and Fred MacMurray, I wasn’t sure that I had ever read the book. (I should also mention that Ma and Pa Kettle, who appear in the book, were played by – who else – Marjorie Main and Percy...more MacDonald, Betty. THE EGG AND I. (1945). ****. A friend of mine let me know that he had just read the second volume of this memoir, this title being part one. I didn’t know that there was a second volume (and even a third). In fact, although I know I have seen the film made from the book starring Claudet Colbert and Fred MacMurray, I wasn’t sure that I had ever read the book. (I should also mention that Ma and Pa Kettle, who appear in the book, were played by – who else – Marjorie Main and Percy Kilbride.) I found a copy (a book club edition) at our local library and dug in. At the time this was written and published, WW II was coming to an end. Soldiers were slowly being demobbed and were back looking for what they might do with the rest of their lives. Although Betty’s husband, Bob, wasn’t necessarily in the service – nor is there any mention of the war – he decides to strike off on his own and start a chicken ranch in Washington state, somewhere in the wilds of the Northwest. His wife Betty – the author – agrees to go along with him in this venture, since she was brought up to believe that when a husband finds what it is he wants to do in life, his wife should support him 100%. Little did she know what she was getting into as they bought an old chicken rance that had been abandoned and was in the middle of nowhere. They had plans, though. together they managed to repair the buildings and build the necessary housing for their first 1,000 chicks. There was also the need to start their own vegetable garden and to acquire some small number of livestock – pigs, cattle, etc. Their nearest neighbors were four miles away, and were a bit strange. In fact, all their neighbors plus any remaining Indians were all ‘different’. What poor Betty had to go through with this project constitutes the story she tells. From an ardent supporter of her husband’s efforts and her full cooperation with all of the work involved, she slowly becomes a woman trapped in a wilderness, surrounded by mental defectives and drunken Indians and dangerous wildlife. All of the story is told with humor tinged with just a trace of bitterness that engaged the American public at the time. The book club edition I read told us that over 3 million copies of the book had been sold thus far, with its additional translation into twelve foreign languages. The book club edition boasted new plates that would now bring this classic to additional millions. It might have been, since this was the fifth printing of the book club edition. As it turned out, I hadn’t read the book before, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Recommended.(less)

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May 21, 2009 Steve rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: everyone!

Recommended to Steve by: Found it in the library as a kid

As far as I'm concerned, this is the best book ever written. By anybody. And, go figure, it's non-fiction, a rarity for me anyway. MacDonald, as a bride in the 1920s, fell prey to her new husband's long-cherished dream of owning a chicken ranch, so off they went to the wilderness of Washington to raise chickens in a remote mountain location, where the nearest neighbors were a two-mile walk away. Frankly, living in the wilderness without electricity or indoor plumbing (she carried water from a sp...more

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Apr 29, 2009 Linda rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

There are books that stay with you all your life. My mother read this to my sisters and brother and I when we were sick with the flu in England in the early 50's. I believe I have read this book about 30 times.

Betty Macdonald's early biography, she wasn't someone really famous, but she had a way with words. (the book is no where near as shallow and trivial as the movie of the same name with Claudette Colbert as a ridiculous woman dressed up at a county fair) Her description of how she ended up...more

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Jul 30, 2012 V. Briceland rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I'm always a little mystified when people refer to the 'happy ending' of Betty MacDonald's 1945 runway bestselling memoir, and express their bafflement that she's divorced by the time of her follow-up volumes, The Plague and I and Anybody Can Do Anything. The book ends with MacDonald contemplating an imminent miserable winter with a distant husband she's just declared 'poles apart,' emotionally. That's happy?

Perhaps much of the explanation lies with the era's higher tolerance for a husband's lac...more I'm always a little mystified when people refer to the 'happy ending' of Betty MacDonald's 1945 runway bestselling memoir, and express their bafflement that she's divorced by the time of her follow-up volumes, The Plague and I and Anybody Can Do Anything. The book ends with MacDonald contemplating an imminent miserable winter with a distant husband she's just declared 'poles apart,' emotionally. That's happy?

Perhaps much of the explanation lies with the era's higher tolerance for a husband's lack of empathy—at least, that's the only real justification for which I can attribute anyone's inability to see how miserable MacDonald is throughout her volume. She writes of her naive belief that a wife should support her husband's whims, and as a consequence ends up on a chicken farm with no running water or electricity, in the middle of the mountains of Washington state. She has no books, no friends. Her husband treats his dogs and livestock better than he does his wife; the height of his romanticism in the book is when he grudgingly cracks a crab for her at a picnic. (He even lifts mattresses to inspect if she's dusted the bedsprings, for Pete's sake.)

I suspect most of the blame for the misapprehension that this is a happy book lies with MacDonald herself . . . just because she's so damned funny. She recalls her deprivations with an admirable lack of self-pity and without really calling attention to how miserable she really must have been. Her comic sensibility blossoms in this, her very first work, as she contrasts her utter unpreparedness for the life of a egg farm workhorse with the absurdities she finds in rural living. It's a clever bit of misdirection to lead her readers into thinking her exile was a laugh a minute, but The Egg and I is definitely constructed upon a bedrock of isolation and regret.

I'm making it sound like a Chekovian nightmare—it's not. It's sharp, and funny, and amazingly unsentimental.

The book is always associated with the characters of Ma and Pa Kettle, whose appearance in the 1947 movie based on the book led to an eight-movie spinoff. It's surprising how very little space those characters occupy in the memoir, though—they appear on perhaps a dozen or so pages. MacDonald has such a natural and vivid way of bringing folk to life that it's unsurprising they're so unforgettable.(less)

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Aug 17, 2010 amelia rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

So, here's the thing. This book is wildly racist, to the point where there's one chapter I would advocate skipping entirely. That said, I really loved the rest of it and do think it's very worth reading (provided you can accept the aforementioned bit as outdated, rather than simply hateful). While those bits feel incredibly backwards and outdated, they are juxtaposed with surprisingly modern feeling writing (which makes up the majority of the book) like:

"Until I moved to the ranch, the coming o...more

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Jun 11, 2011 Gail rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Well, this is considered a classic and I had heard good things about it, so I selected it for a book group I belong to. I simply could not read it word-for-word, because the author included SO much detail in her writing. The parts I didn't read thoroughly I did skim, though. I think the other members of the group enjoyed it more than I did. Although there were certainly humorous parts, I felt sorry for the author and found many of the characters unsympathetic. In particular, the male characters...more

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Apr 27, 2010 MAP rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: biographies-and-memoirs, non-fiction, humor

This book was written in 1945 and follows Betty MacDonald's adventures in the 1920s living on a chicken farm with her new husband in Washington State. The book is based in reality, but characters have been melded, warped, squished together, and changed for humor's sake.

The book is, first and foremost, and humor book, and I will admit there were several laugh out loud moments, especially near the beginning. MacDonald certainly has a sly wit about her and since this was her first try at writing, I...more

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Feb 15, 2010 Christine rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Oh, this book.

I would give 90% of it 5 stars, but the other 10% gets negative stars. So whatever that evens out to is anyone's guess...The author is so talented and her prose so sprightly in parts and poetic in others that there can be no doubt as to the quality of the writing. Much if not most of it is fantastic.

My biggest problem with this book is the author's deeply ingrained snobbery and worse, racism. She's dismissive of all her neighbors, drawing blood with her pen as she eviscerates their...more

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Jul 01, 2012 Jeff Miller rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Simcha Fisher back in May posted an article on LOL Books and mentioned this book.

The Egg and I by Betty MacDonald. One of my favorite memoirs. A lovestruck newlywed follows her husband to the largely unspoiled wilderness of Washington State, where they carve out a homestead and raise chickens, with backbreaking labor from dawn till dusk and beyond. You end up wanting to clobber her husband, but the story is completely engrossing. I guess I have a soft spot for someone who spends so much time jus...more Simcha Fisher back in May posted an article on LOL Books and mentioned this book.

The Egg and I by Betty MacDonald. One of my favorite memoirs. A lovestruck newlywed follows her husband to the largely unspoiled wilderness of Washington State, where they carve out a homestead and raise chickens, with backbreaking labor from dawn till dusk and beyond. You end up wanting to clobber her husband, but the story is completely engrossing. I guess I have a soft spot for someone who spends so much time just complaining about things — but oh man, what great stories, what crazy characters. (NB: She portrays native Americans in a way that many readers today will not be able to tolerate.)

As I kid I fondly remember the movies based on this book and especially the characters of Ma and Pa Kettle. I hadn’t realized it was a semi-biographical story. This is often a very funny book as the author talks about her life growing up moving from city to city. At 20 she gets married to an older man who later decides to give up his current career for the life of the chicken farmer. Now this is not quite the Green Acres scenario with the city born wife with new farmer husband and resulting hijinks. Though it has echoes of that with Bob her husband being a fairly capable man being able to pull off life as a chicken farmer. Betty MacDonald though sees herself as less than capable and often bumbling in her adaptation as a farmers wife. She puts all the difficulties rather strikingly and very humorously. I especially enjoyed her relating the tales of “Stove” and the subsequent battles with the old wood cooking stove. In the mix of this she is also able to nicely relate the scenery around her and it brought up my own memories of the time I lived in Washington State while in the Navy.

As in the movies the funniest characters are Ma and Pa Kettle, the next door neighbors as semi-hillbillies. Pa Kettle the lazy shift who is always trying to find somebody to do the work for him. As Simcha notes the portrayal of native Americans is quite stereotypical and off-putting. Though this was not the only aspect of the book I found off-putting. For me there was and underlying current of superiority as the author relates to the people around her. While Ma and Pa Kettle are rather sympathetic characters many people are simply “idiots” including her descriptions of her own relatives. This portrayal of the people around her took away some of my enjoyment of what was so often truly funny in the book. She came across to me a a bit of a jerk.

When I looked up her Wikipedia entry after reading the book I was not greatly surprised to find that she had divorced her husband the chicken farmer and remarried. Though the book being written in 1945 there was some effort to hide her divorce. In the movie version the husband is named Bob MacDonald even though MacDonald is the last name of the man she later married.(less)

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Mar 08, 2012 Diane Nagatomo rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

On one hand, I really loved this book---it was witty and it was a window into a world that is long gone. On the other hand, I was astonished by the racism (well, not really astonished by the racism itself, but astonished by how accepted it was at that time and how it ended up in a published book--very proud to know that this blatant racism is a thing of the past) and of the sexism (again, not so astonished, but relieved that the world is a different place). I can't believe that this is the first...more

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Jan 28, 2011 Paul Hollingsworth rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Sometime we forget about the benefits of browsing the stacks at the library. I stumbled upon this while looking for some books about gardening and composting, and while it wasn't exactly what I was looking for, I decided to give it a try.

In case you didn't know, I live on a farm. While we don't tend the land, it is leased out to a local family who farms a lot of acreage in our part of North Carolina. Living on this much open land has given rise to thoughts of raising a few chickens, or perhaps...more

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Jun 29, 2010 Felisa Rosa rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: autobiography, northwest-history

A memoir of rural life that lit up the best-seller lists in 1945, The Egg and I is the story of a young bride in the late 1920s who gets dragged to the woods of Washington by her enthusiastic and unsympathetic husband. Like Shirley Jackson's Life Among the Savages, which I just read, MacDonald's memoir captures the life of an overwhelmed housewife with a keen mind, a sharp sense of humor, and an unusual and subversive vision of her time. These were women who were trying to be good wives and moth...more A memoir of rural life that lit up the best-seller lists in 1945, The Egg and I is the story of a young bride in the late 1920s who gets dragged to the woods of Washington by her enthusiastic and unsympathetic husband. Like Shirley Jackson's Life Among the Savages, which I just read, MacDonald's memoir captures the life of an overwhelmed housewife with a keen mind, a sharp sense of humor, and an unusual and subversive vision of her time. These were women who were trying to be good wives and mothers, but who didn't always like the role they were pushed into, and said so, wittily. Both writers let the darkness creep in at the edges of otherwise breezy stories, which give the books a poignancy one might not expect from the 'harried housewife' genre.

MacDonald is a strong writer, who captures the sometimes creepy beauty of the Northwestern wilderness vividly. Her descriptions of the couple's hillbilly neighbors are funny, if a bit cruel at times. Particularly amusing are her horrified descriptions of the dull and unhealthy food (pork belly and boiled macaroni) her neighbors ate on a regular basis, despite their access to fabulous homegrown vegetables and wild foods. She was evidently far ahead of her time in regards to food: she writes descriptions of the bounty of their table that would make a modern foodie grown in hunger and jealousy. Wild mushrooms, fresh mussels, fresh oysters, fresh cream...Unfortunately, she was not ahead of her time in regard to her take on the local Native Americans: if anything, her descriptions, though intended to be humorous, are unusually mean-spirited. However, over time I have come to accept that
works and ideas are best judged in the context of their time, and I'm pretty sure MacDonald would have had a different take (or at least had the good sense to keep her mouth shut) had she been writing today. Just as I have to grudgingly appreciate Jefferson for some of his ideas, if not all of them, I can't discount a sharp writer for espousing one view I don't agree with. Did I just compare Betty MacDonald to Thomas Jefferson? Yes I did.
Anyway...a highly entertaining read if you can ignore that fatal flaw.(less)

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Aug 22, 2012 Alexandra rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I really had no idea what this book was but I knew it was old and I heard it was funny. When it arrived from the library, I saw that the copy was from the early 60's. It smelled musty and the pages were yellowed. The spine cracked when I opened it. Heaven. I had a feeling it would be wonderful and I was right.

About midway through reading, I realized this is an autobiography about Betty MacDonald's life on a chicken farm in the state of Washington. That made all the stories even more laugh out lo...more

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Mar 12, 2011 Mary Deborde rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I have to say, this is my favorite book of all time. First introduced to Betty's semi-fictionalized memoirs in the late 60s (via my mother's book collection), I've since made it a point to search out
the vintage printings of all her works.

I tend to read this book once a year or so, usually during the winter months, because there is something
familiar and cozy about The Egg and I - like a pair of well worn slippers. It's a trusted friend I turn to now & then, to bask in the whimsical adventure...more

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About Betty MacDonald

The first book written by Betty MacDonald, The Egg and I , rocketed to the top of the national bestseller list in 1945. Translations followed in more than 30 languages, along with a series of popular movies. In the wake of World War II, the hilarious accounts of MacDonald's adventures as a backwoods farmer's wife in Chimacum Valley were a breath of fresh air for readers around the world. On the ne...more The first book written by Betty MacDonald, The Egg and I , rocketed to the top of the national bestseller list in 1945. Translations followed in more than 30 languages, along with a series of popular movies. In the wake of World War II, the hilarious accounts of MacDonald's adventures as a backwoods farmer's wife in Chimacum Valley were a breath of fresh air for readers around the world. On the negative side, her book spawned a perception of Washington as a land of eccentric country bumpkins like Ma and Pa Kettle.

Anne Elizabeth Campbell Bard, called Betsy in childhood and later known world-wide as Betty MacDonald, was born in Boulder, Colorado, to Darsie and Elsie/Sydney Bard on March 26, 1908. Her father, a mining engineer, moved the family frequently before settling in Seattle. Betty attended the St. Nicholas School on Capitol Hill, then Lincoln High School. In 1924 she graduated from Roosevelt High School.

On July 9, 1927, Betty Bard married Robert E. Heskett and moved with him to the farm in the tiny community of Center in the Chimacum Valley near Port Townsend that lacked both plumbing and electricity. Betty later regaled family and friends with stories of her struggles during this time, eventually transforming them into the book that would make her famous.

After four years, Betty left Robert Hesket, taking their two daughters, Anne and Joan, with her. She returned to the family home in Seattle and worked at various jobs, keeping her sense of humor and her journal even when tuberculosis forced her to spend a year at Firland Sanatorium in what is now the city of Shoreline.

On April 29, 1942, she married Donald C. MacDonald (1910-1975) and moved with him and her daughters to a beach home on Vashon Island. Built as a summer home, it was cold and damp and in need of improvements. Anne and Joan enrolled in school while Don and Betty commuted to Seattle for work every day. Betty later described her daily scramble from home to the ferry dock in [book:Onions In The Stew|:

"It was always seven o'clock and my ferry left at seven-twenty and I should have left at six-fifty and now I would have to run the last quarter of a mile. I wore loafers and woolen socks over my silk stockings, carried my office shoes along with my lunch, purse, current book and grocery list in a large green felt bag. The county trail connecting our beach with the rest of the world begins at a cluster of mailboxes down by the dock, meanders along the steep southwest face of the island about fifty feet above the shore, and ends at our house ... if it was dark when I left the house (and it usually was) I ... ran the rest of the way to the ferry ... This boisterous early morning activity also started my blood circulating, churning, really, and by the time I got to the office I was not only bileless, I was boiling hot" (p. 57).

Their fortune changed with a call from MacDonald's sister, Mary Bard Jensen (1904-1970). At a cocktail party, Mary ran into a friend who was a publishing company scout and told him that Betty was writing a book (which she was not). Betty whipped up the proposal for The Egg and I to save her sister embarrassment. The scout requested a full manuscript, which was rejected by one publishing house. With the assistance of the New York literary agency Brandt & Brandt, the book was serialized in the Atlantic Monthly and then published by J.B. Lippincott. She dedicated the book "To my sister Mary, who has always believed that I can do anything she puts her mind to."(less)

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Quotes from The Egg and I

“There was a Sears, Roebuck catalogue painfully twisted and shellacked and tied with a red cord. The white card beneath it said, An inexpensive doorstop." ... There were catsup bottles made into bud vases, closthespins decorated with crepe paper butterflies for use as curtin hold-backers, crocheted bags for silverware, bouquets of crepe paper and velvet flowers, an enormous funeral set piece of white organdy gardenias and dark green oilcloth leaves with REST IN PEACE spelled out in white pipe cleaners, embroidered pictures, burned wood match boxes, and fancy pillows by the hundreds. The pillows embraced every sentiment from FRANKY AND JOHNNY WERE LOVERS in black beads on a cerise satin background to the Twenty-Third Psalm in white on black velvet. It was an impressive exhibit of what loneliness can do to people.” — 5 people liked it

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The Egg and I (Betty MacDonald Memoirs #1)

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