Showing posts with label mothers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mothers. Show all posts
Jan 11, 2018
Jan 1, 2016
Primates of Park Avenue - Wednesday Martin
Kirkus Reviews
A look at the social rites and rituals of downtown Manhattan through the eyes of former New York Post contributor Martin (Stepmonster: A New Look at Why Real Stepmothers Think, Feel, and Act the Way We Do, 2009, etc.). Coming to a true understanding of any culture involves immersing oneself completely. While it may be uncommon to conduct anthropological research in a place like Manhattan's Upper East Side, the author did just that, moving to the neighborhood with little knowledge of the cultural mores but a hunger to learn more. After settling in to the UES with her husband and son, Martin found herself living the sort of pampered life millions of Americans yearn for. She had a husband at work making good money, a baby, a baby nurse, and time to spend getting mothering right. She also realized that she was very much a fish out of water, since she grew up in the slower, less image-obsessed Midwest. The author applied her educational training to finding her way in this unfamili ar environment (she opens with "Fieldnotes" on such elements as "geographic origins of islanders," "resource acquisition and distribution," and "quadrant affiliation and construction of social identity"). She explores the "social turbocharge" that women experience through owning a Birkin handbag, and she drops plenty of brand names, store names, street names, and other signposts of identification. When Martin allows the narrative to drift more toward science—e.g., her discussion of the juicing/fasting/detoxing fads and how they can shift estrogen levels—the book becomes a useful guide for UES (and other upwardly mobile) women looking inward to understand themselves better—or alternately, to learn the underpinnings of all the maneuverings so as to socially maneuver more efficiently. Sometimes funny but effective for the same reason a Birkin is: it's designed for a certain group of people, and likely them alone. Copyright Kirkus 2015 Kirkus/BPI Communications.All rights reserved
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Aug 1, 2015
Big little lies - Liane Moriarty
Summary: Follows three mothers, each at a crossroads, and their potential involvement in a riot at a school trivia night that leaves one parent dead in what appears to be a tragic accident, but which evidence shows might have been premeditated.
Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* It begins with a murder. It's not clear who was killed, but it was definitely someone at the Audrey and Elvis Trivia Night fund-raiser at Piriwee Public School on the coast of Australia. Back up six months, to when Madeline Mackenzie celebrated her fortieth birthday with kindergarten orientation for her youngest daughter, Chloe. She runs into the gorgeous, if spacey, Celeste White and her twin boys; new kid Ziggy Chapman and his mom, shy, jumpy, Jane; and, unfortunately, her ex-husband and his New Age wife, Bonnie, and their daughter, Skye. When a little girl accuses Ziggy of choking her, the class moms begin to divide. As antibullying fervor escalates, Jane grows closer to Madeline, with whom she shares her terrible secret, and Celeste, who is hiding an insidious secret of her own, not that she will admit it. What starts as a send-up of suburban helicopter parenting turns darker as the pages flip by, building to a tense climax at Trivia Night, where one too many fizzy pink cocktails leads to . . . well, murder. Funny and thrilling, page-turning but with emotional depth, Big Little Lies is a terrific follow-up to The Husband's Secret (2013). Copyright 2014 Booklist Reviews.
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Mar 1, 2014
Everything is perfect when you're a liar - Kelly Oxford
Summary: A Twitter sensation and popular writer uses her trademark blend of biting wit and self-deprecation to find hilarity in everyday life.
Kirkus Reviews
Autobiographical vignettes from Twitter comedian Oxford. These stories fall into roughly three stages of the author's life: obnoxiously precocious childhood, confused young adulthood and parenthood. When Oxford tells us about her childhood and teen years, she doesn't hold back, giving us mortifying stories about wetting herself in a gas station and puking in her friend's father's car before a party. She also comes across as somewhat bratty and entitled. Her young adulthood was appropriately wacky. She flew from Canada to Los Angeles on a whim in a desperate attempt to meet Leonardo DiCaprio and bought, then sold, a dilapidated camper van. When describing her adulthood and parenthood, she grows into her precociousness. "An Open Letter to the Nurse Who Gave Me an Enema Bottle" is entertaining, and the last sentence is genuinely funny and unexpected. "How I Met Your Father" is sweetly raunchy, the kind of story that will horrify her children but delight her grandchildren. As amusing as some of these stories are, Oxford is a mostly unremarkable writer with a remarkable claim to fame: her successful use of Twitter to gain an audience for her humor and writing. Yet this, the most interesting fact about her, receives very little attention in the book. She does share her experience meeting David Copperfield as a result of a Twitter exchange, but the story readers will most likely want to hear--how she got started with Twitter and how her tweets got the attention of significant public figures like Copperfield and Roger Ebert--is absent from the narrative. Alternately grating and amusing, Oxford skips the most interesting part of her life: her canny use of Twitter. Copyright Kirkus 2013 Kirkus/BPI Communications.All rights reserved.
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Apr 1, 2012
Leap back home to me - Lauren Thompson
Summary: A little frog makes increasingly bold leaps out into the world, and then comes back to his mother after each excursion.
Booklist Reviews
In a short, rhymed text, a frog mother tells her young frog to leap from the lily pad: "Leap frog over the ladybug. / Leap frog over the bee. / Leap frog over the tickly clover, / then leap back home to me!" Each set of leaps becomes more adventuresome, with the young frog leaping over mountains, the sea, the sun, and ultimately "the farthest stars," returning each time to a comforting activity (book sharing, coloring, hugs) with mother. Double-page spreads of simple cartoon illustrations in muted colors show the zany leaps of the bug-eyed frog as it whizzes through the air. The simplicity of the illustrations, the brevity and repetition of the lively text, and the accompanying jumping sounds ("SPROING!") make this a natural for group sharing. Check out Steve Breen's Stick (2007), also about a frog having an adventure away from the lily pad. Copyright 2011 Booklist Reviews.
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Some assembly required - Anne Lamott
Summary: The author and her son chronicle his first year as a teenage father and her journey as a mother and new grandmother, describing their respective experiences with changing roles, the baby's mother, and poignant family losses.
Booklist Reviews
Lamott burst onto the literary scene in 1993 with Operating Instructions, her achingly honest account of her son Sam's first year of life, endearing herself to single mothers, parents, and even nonparents. She is set to do the same thing now for grandparenthood, as she and Sam explore their first year with Sam's son, Jax. When Sam announced that he and recent girlfriend Amy were about to become parents, Lamott reacted as only Lamott could, with a joyful "Oh, yes!" followed by a fearful "Oh, no!" After all, at fiftysomething, she was too young to be a grandmother, and at 19, Sam was too young to be a father. But tell all that to Jax, who is, of course, the Perfect Baby. That his parents' relationship is less so is a source of constant consternation for Lamott, who tries to fix things in her own inimitable and irritating way. Funny, frantic, and frustrating, Lamott enthusiastically embraces this new chapter in her life, learning that she is a wiser grandparent than parent who, nevertheless, managed to produce one pretty remarkable son. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Best-selling Lamott will delight her avid fans and attract new readers among fellow grandparents as she goes on a national tour and makes media appearances. Copyright 2011 Booklist Reviews.
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Aug 1, 2011
Secret daughter - Shilpi Somaya Gowda
Summary: Interweaves the stories of a baby girl in India, the American doctor who adopted her, and the Indian mother who gave her up in favor of a son, as two families--one in India, the other in the United States--are changed by the child that connects them.
Kirkus Reviews
Fiction with a conscience, as two couples worlds apart are linked by an adopted child.Gowda's debut opens in 1984 with poor Indian village-dweller Kavita giving birth to a second daughter. When her first was born, husband Jasu immediately arranged the child's death. Girls are a luxury the couple can't afford; they need boys, who don't require dowries and can help with the labor of surviving. This time around, Kavita stands up to Jasu, names the baby Usha and takes her to an orphanage. Adopted and renamed Asha, she becomes the only child of Krishnan, scion of a wealthy Bombay family, who is now a neurosurgeon in San Francisco, and his American wife Somer. Asha's arrival assuages some of Somer's pain over her infertility but brings its own cultural problems. Asha grows up feeling incomplete, cut off from half her heritage by her mother's fears and neediness. As a college student, her flair for journalism leads to a fellowship, and she chooses to spend the year in Bombay (now Mumbai), giving Gowda further opportunity to describe India, mainly its gender imbalance and the social divide between the wealthy and the grindingly impoverished. Somer and Krishnan's marriage goes through a rocky phase, and Kavita and Jasu have problems too, but Asha's visit inevitably provides the opportunity to connect some, if not all, of the loose ends.A lightweight fable of family division and reconciliation, gaining intensity and depth from the author's sharp social observations. Copyright Kirkus 2009 Kirkus/BPI Communications.All rights reserved.
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