One More for the People

by Martha Grover

Eight years in the making, One More for the People is the first collection of Martha Grover’s zine Somnambulist. Playful, wry, and conversational, One More for the People chronicles three generations in the life of the Grover family. As these idiosyncratic characters reluctantly confront adulthood, one Grover is always there to take notes. But after she’s diagnosed with a rare and potentially fatal disease (whose 81 symptoms include dramatic changes to her appearance, not to mention the dreaded possibility of having to move back home), One More for the People becomes something unexpected: a survival guide. In the spirit of Lucy Grealy’s Autobiography of a Face, Grover transforms her own misfortune into a tale as unsettling as it is entertaining.

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction, Literature

224 pages, Paperback

First published December 13, 2011

About the author

Martha Grover is an author, poet, and artist living in Corbett, Oregon. She is the author of One More for the People, The End of My Career (Perfect Day Publishing) and Sorry I Was Gone, a lyric memoir. The End of My Career was a finalist for the Oregon Book Awards in creative nonfiction in 2017. Her work has also appeared in numerous journals. She has been publishing her zine, Somnambulist, since 2003.
Check out more of my work at: patreon.com/marthagrover

Reviews

[Bud Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

What an excellent book! Can't recommend this high enough. Among my absolute favorites. A memoir of sorts from a person with a real unique life. I've dug her Somnambulist Blog/zine for a while and must say, this book was a real kick ass home run scenario with very addictive reading qualities. Check it out.

[allison · Rating 4 out of 5]

Martha Grover is my new hero! I fell in love with her writing after reading her essay Cheese Clerk online and picked up this book not too long after. The whole thing is great, but my favorites were the interview with her grandfather about all the jobs he'd ever held and the minutes from her Sunday-morning family meetings.

[Annie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved! Got mildly anxious at the Cushing's stuff (hypochondriac), lost my shit over the family minutes. K&A - be forewarned that I will be writting/tweeting/taping family get-togethers from here on out.

Hi-five to Felus for the rec (and loan)! (Although this is one I'll be buying for future readings.)

[Aaron Dietz · Rating 5 out of 5]

The first two pieces in this book are dream pieces, where the author describes a dream she had. Dream pieces are very very difficult to make interesting to anyone who wasn't in the dream, but Martha Grover nails them. I was hooked from the beginning, then.

My favorite section was probably the transcripts/notes from her family meetings (disfunctional, but honest, and hilarious, and loving), but I also very much enjoyed Martha's unique and interesting framing of her own experiences dealing with Cushing's disease. Oh, and the cheese shop pieces!

[Trudy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I very much wish that I was able to get together with my family weekly to bicker about cleaning bathrooms. Really. That and the piece about the woods were my favorite. I am a sucker for family memoirs though, especially when they are not of the, "my family was the worst thing ever" variety.

[Yasmin · Rating 4 out of 5]

A memoir that's a collection from the author's zine. It had the quirkiness of a zine, but polished. Funny and unusual, she covers the strange questions she gets working behind a cheese counter, records minutes of her large family's weekly meetings, and dealing with a serious chronic illness.

[Joe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really enjoyed this collection (all taken from Grover's zine) -- from cheese questions, to family meeting minutes, to scary diseases...she covers it all with a light grace that cuts real deep occasionally. I'm looking forward to reading more from Martha...and the next Perfect Day Publishing book.

[Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

I didn't actually read all of this collection but I loved what I did read. Family meeting minutes!

[Davida · Rating 3 out of 5]

LOVED the first part, esp. interview with Grandpa - Bukowski-esque. Got very bored by the Grover family minutes, but this was redeemed by the commentary at the end.

[Sandra · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a delightfully humane and humorous read this was. Grover combines a dry wit and a keen sense of fairness with her enviable talent to write clearly about not only the evolving of her family but also her coping with Cushing’s Disease. Who would have thought “The Grover Family Meeting Minutes” could be so entertaining—well, I was addicted as would be anyone who has been part of a loving, sometimes dysfunctional and undisciplined, but always there-for-you family. While she is to be praised for recording what other family members experience and letting their accounts stand on their own words, I think I would have liked just a tad more reflection from Grover that might have provided a unifying field for the different sections of this collection.

[Edward Champion · Rating 4 out of 5]

This isn't quite as good as END OF MY CAREER - in large part because this is much earlier in Grover's writing/illustrative run and many of these essays bubbled from her zine SOMNABUILIST -- but these are still entertaining, lively, and stylistically dying. Grover is at her best when being honest about living with Cushing disease. And I also found her family meeting minutes section to be quite original in its stylistic approach, a big justification in and of itself why we need to get all zines in some published form. I don't know if Martha Grover will ever be known as a household name, but she really should she better known.

[Margaret Adams]

My second Martha Grover book (I read End of My Career a few years ago). Honestly I think I liked this book even more, though the tone and structure of the two books--based on Grover's zine, the Sonambulist--were very similar.

[Art Edwards · Rating 5 out of 5]

The family meeting minutes are wonderful, but the interview with Martha's grandfather is one of the best nonfiction pieces I've read all year.

[Cory Blystone · Rating 5 out of 5]

Honest, blunt, and reflective. Grover is a master at revealing the beauty and complexity in life’s seeming mundanity.

[Novina · Rating 2 out of 5]

Family meetings
Misfortune's brought together
Nothing changes though

[Margaret · Rating 3 out of 5]

Enjoyable and entertaining. I liked the insight into her family and growing up. She navigates illness with aplomb.

[John Barbery · Rating 5 out of 5]

I picked this up from an indy bookstore in San Diego and I’m glad I did. Grover’s stories read like an unfolding conversation that engage you and keep you there. It centers on her diagnosis with Cushings disease and how she just tried to survive. It was sardonic and honest and wrly humorous. It was also heavy and sometimes sad. Nevertheless it was a solid account of a human experience well documented.

[Meave · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really wanted this to be better. Like there's quirk, and pathos, and humor, but it's all surface. None of the emotions feels deep or strong. Like she didn't bring the good stuff to the page, I don't know. Just, disappointing. Maybe her next book will be better. She seems to have a lot of potential.

[Ale Esquer · Rating 5 out of 5]

I *loved* this book. I bought it without really knowing what it was about, and was really happily surprised. The writing is so truthful, and faces hard truths head on, while still always maintaining a sense of hope and understanding of how ridiculous life and relationships (especially family relationships) can be. Would highly recommend.

[Evan]

"The flipping of the Hyundai marked a small cultural shift in our family unit: noting how close we'd come to death, we were forced to wear our seatbelts from that moment on. However, this change in our habits affected only one small portion of our family's general attitude, which was "having fun" combined with "God's will" finished off with a touch of "who gives a shit" that flirted on the edges of neglect as far as the seven of us offspring were concerned."