A perceptive and essential guide to an uncommon family arrangement.
A practical introduction to nesting, aimed at parents on the verge of living apart.
For couples considering separation or divorce, it can be difficult to calmly discuss future co-parenting plans. As licensed clinical psychologist Buscho explains in this well-structured debut, nesting is a way for such couples to reduce conflict while providing a consistent home for their children. The author defines it as “an arrangement where the children stay in the family home, and the parents rotate in and out for their scheduled parenting time.” When not on duty, the other parent lives either in a shared off-site residence, a different home, or in a separate area of the family residence. Buscho recognizes that only parents with considerable financial means can engage in nesting and that the arrangement is inappropriate for families suffering from problems involving substance abuse or domestic violence. But for certain families, she notes, the benefits of temporarily nesting during a turbulent time can be substantial. For example, it can allow the parent who has traditionally had less parenting time during the marriage to “develop closer ties with the children while ‘coming up to speed’ as a solo parent.” Buscho convincingly describes the potential benefits and shortcomings of this parenting method and addresses questions regarding budgeting, communication, and parents’ future romantic relationships. She also gives detailed instructions for creating a successful, personalized nesting agreement as well as valuable templates and worksheets that couples may use as they evolve into co-parents. Buscho also provides suggestions for self-care, which occasionally feel a bit simplistic. However, the author’s compassion and wisdom are evident throughout—in part because the author went through the nesting process herself when she and her husband divorced. “Case in Point” vignettes throughout feature specific families’ stories, allowing Buscho to include perspectives from different cultures and family structures.
A perceptive and essential guide to an uncommon family arrangement.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-50-721409-1
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Adams Media
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.
A charming bird journey with the bestselling author.
In his introduction to Tan’s “nature journal,” David Allen Sibley, the acclaimed ornithologist, nails the spirit of this book: a “collection of delightfully quirky, thoughtful, and personal observations of birds in sketches and words.” For years, Tan has looked out on her California backyard “paradise”—oaks, periwinkle vines, birch, Japanese maple, fuchsia shrubs—observing more than 60 species of birds, and she fashions her findings into delightful and approachable journal excerpts, accompanied by her gorgeous color sketches. As the entries—“a record of my life”—move along, the author becomes more adept at identifying and capturing them with words and pencils. Her first entry is September 16, 2017: Shortly after putting up hummingbird feeders, one of the tiny, delicate creatures landed on her hand and fed. “We have a relationship,” she writes. “I am in love.” By August 2018, her backyard “has become a menagerie of fledglings…all learning to fly.” Day by day, she has continued to learn more about the birds, their activities, and how she should relate to them; she also admits mistakes when they occur. In December 2018, she was excited to observe a Townsend’s Warbler—“Omigod! It’s looking at me. Displeased expression.” Battling pesky squirrels, Tan deployed Hot Pepper Suet to keep them away, and she deterred crows by hanging a fake one upside down. The author also declared war on outdoor cats when she learned they kill more than 1 billion birds per year. In May 2019, she notes that she spends $250 per month on beetle larvae. In June 2019, she confesses “spending more hours a day staring at birds than writing. How can I not?” Her last entry, on December 15, 2022, celebrates when an eating bird pauses, “looks and acknowledges I am there.”
An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.Pub Date: April 23, 2024
ISBN: 9780593536131
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
Sedaris at his darkest—and his best.
In which the veteran humorist enters middle age with fine snark but some trepidation as well.
Mortality is weighing on Sedaris (Theft by Finding: Diaries 1977-2002, 2017, etc.), much of it his own, professional narcissist that he is. Watching an elderly man have a bowel accident on a plane, he dreaded the day when he would be the target of teenagers’ jokes “as they raise their phones to take my picture from behind.” A skin tumor troubled him, but so did the doctor who told him he couldn’t keep it once it was removed. “But it’s my tumor,” he insisted. “I made it.” (Eventually, he found a semitrained doctor to remove and give him the lipoma, which he proceeded to feed to a turtle.) The deaths of others are much on the author’s mind as well: He contemplates the suicide of his sister Tiffany, his alcoholic mother’s death, and his cantankerous father’s erratic behavior. His contemplation of his mother’s drinking—and his family’s denial of it—makes for some of the most poignant writing in the book: The sound of her putting ice in a rocks glass increasingly sounded “like a trigger being cocked.” Despite the gloom, however, frivolity still abides in the Sedaris clan. His summer home on the Carolina coast, which he dubbed the Sea Section, overspills with irreverent bantering between him and his siblings as his long-suffering partner, Hugh, looks on. Sedaris hasn’t lost his capacity for bemused observations of the people he encounters. For example, cashiers who say “have a blessed day” make him feel “like you’ve been sprayed against your will with God cologne.” But bad news has sharpened the author’s humor, and this book is defined by a persistent, engaging bafflement over how seriously or unseriously to take life when it’s increasingly filled with Trump and funerals.
Sedaris at his darkest—and his best.Pub Date: May 29, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-316-39238-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2018
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