Crazy as Chocolate, Elisabeth Hyde, MacAdam/Cage, March 2002, 170 pages
Book Review by Lisa Vermette
Elisabeth Hyde, born and raised in New Hampshire gives us “Crazy as Chocolate”, a story set in Colorado and Seattle with jaunts to Manchester and views from the top of Mount Lafayette.  The story is current day mixed with flashbacks of the past thirty years to show us how three family members are still coping with the suicide of their family’s matriarch.
The aftermath of suicide is emotionally messy for any surviving family member.  Hyde’s concise and descriptive writing style allows each character’s thoughts and feelings to come off the page and into your life.  I had a hard time getting through the early chapters of the book because the subject is all too real and extremely depressing.  It’s not a fairy tale with a happy ending.  Izzy is turning 41.  She is now going to be older than her mother was.  The concept of entering an age that her mother never experienced brings all sorts of thoughts to Izzy.  When will she hit menopause?  Will she age gracefully?  Will she go insane and find it easier to end her life rather than face the world?  
Isabel’s mother committed suicide on her 41st birthday.  There was no note and although there had been many signs pointing to the eventuality, no one believed that it would happen.  Izzy, her sister Ellie, and their father have all dealt with the death in different ways over the years.  Izzy seldom tells people how her mother died.  Ellie is sarcastically proud to be following in her mother’s footsteps.  Their father wishes the girls could accept what happened and move on. 
Alternating between past and present, Izzy reflects on her mother’s turbulent life and her own long-buried guilt surrounding the suicide. When Izzy discovers her sister's signs of mental agony she has to consider that insanity runs in the family, which is a scary prospect for anyone.  Hyde’s writing lets us glimpse Ellie’s thoughts and feelings of having deal with her mother’s suicide while being a mother herself.  She has thoughts of suicide and is able to tell Izzy that she finally understands how her mother could take her own life without considering the effect it would have on her young daughters.
As dark as the subject matter is, Hyde has a way of using the tension, general craziness, and individual humor of a family to show that no matter how bad life may be, it does go on.  The book is short, it can be a quick read, but the subject matter is serious and certainly not for everyone.
Elisabeth Hyde trained as a lawyer but decided against practicing law. In 1986 she took time off and wrote her first novel, Her Native Colors, and never looked back. Her second novel, Monoosook Valley was published in 1989. She lives in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains in Colorado with her family.