"Once the lively and eccentric people within the book come to life, we are reminded of the certainty of Fran’s planned death and the reader is left in an almost agonizing wait to read how this inevitable scene will play out. One wishes the paragraphs describing the local idiosyncratic “Wisconsinites” to go on indefinitely, yet evokes within the reader a slight dread of the forthcoming narration of Frannies’ last week in the cabin. The reader feels re-assured that her death is not in vain. Marc Newhouse portrays the full and wonderful life that his mother has experienced and her everlasting influence on the family as a whole. Even among family quarrels and differing opinions, the discussions about how to pull off a legal suicide is replete with dark humour as well as with narration touching upon quirky “mystery” diseases the author is convinced he is experiencing. And then of course, there are the iguanas."

"Life, Death and Iguanas is a fascinating memoir by Marc Newhouse (I read one chapter and was instantly hooked) focusing on the life and death of his mother Frances Newhouse. Because the author has resided in Puerto Rico since 1996, the memoir includes detailed scenes of everyday life on the island and the thought-provoking perspectives of an outsider-becoming-an insider. Edited and formatted by Jan Marie (Taí) Fernández-Toledo, this e-book was self-published through Amazon’s Kindle Direct-Publishing (30 August 2012)."

"It took a seismic event for Marc Newhouse to fall prey to what he calls the family curse.

“In the year that followed my mother’s death,” he wrote, “I spent a lot of time looking at iguanas.”

But iguanas are not the Newhouse family curse, which is not really a curse at all.

What the death of Franny Newhouse — in May 2010, at age 89, in the living room of her home outside Blue Mounds — did was propel her youngest son, Marc, now 55, to write her story, which became the Newhouse family story. That story, set largely in the Madison area, is one of writers."