Refreshingly, a parenting advice book worth its salt.
Novelist Edgerton (Creative Writing/Univ. of North Carolina, Wilmington; The Night Train, 2011, etc.) tenders sage yet waggish fathering advice.
Edgerton is a 68-year-old father with four children between the ages of 6 and 30. Here, he offers the fruits of the many ruminations and experiences that informed them, coming at his subject with a wisdom that is still being surprised, daily. Enjoy the good stuff, he writes, and make sure your children are the best of the good stuff. The author is generous, thankful and unmushy, and his advice is more descriptive than prescriptive—though one can hinge on the other. His suggestions and opinions are always spot-on—“A few weeks before the baby is born, go ahead and install the car seat”—and then leavened with humor: “This could take six to eight hours.” There are choice nuggets about in-laws, childproofing, embarking on the Ferber method of letting your child cry themselves to sleep (“After the second or third night, your mother or mother-in-law or the vegetarian will verbally blister you for this ‘inhumane’ practice”), talking toys (“Satan is real and these are among his gifts") and lice (“burn down the house”). He also throws in zingers that bite, like trying to hold fast to the magic and playfulness of childhood: “It’s sad that children’s open-eyed wonder and sense of play begin to fade as they approach adolescence. One grand function of fathering is to keep the fading to a minimum.” Throughout the long, complicated process of parenting, writes Edgerton, it is important to keep your sense of humor. Fatherhood is a dance of extreme ecstasy and deep worry, but “try not to worry too much.” Nonetheless, “be ready for stress.”
Refreshingly, a parenting advice book worth its salt.Pub Date: May 7, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-316-05692-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2013
Presented as a counterpart to the editors' previous volume, Women on Divorce (which will be reissued in paperback simultaneously with this hardcover publication), here are 15 entirely disparate takes by men, among them Edward Hoagland and Stephen Dobyns. Nearly all the contributors lay claim to suffering, some to real learning. For Ted Solotaroff, ``Getting the Point'' meant doing more than just getting on with life, as men are trained to do; he manages to sound becomingly self-aware (``She had to deal with the isolation of the single woman while I had only to pick up the phone to become an available man''), rather than platitudinously self-conscious, as the flagellations of the younger set do. The most writerly voice belongs to John A. Williams, who left his family despite his promising upward mobility in post-GI- bill Syracuse and his vow that he'd never do what his father did, because he yearned for something ``audacious'' in life: The ``compulsion to leave was greater than the will to stay.'' Almost half the contributors cite what their parents did as influential: Benjamin Cheever blames his dad's drinking for his early impulse to marry (and his dad's quitting, whereupon he could go home again, for his impulse to divorce); Luis Rodriguez roots his addictions and abusive rages in his family's emigration from Mexico and their ensuing marginalization in L.A.; Walter Kirn, whose parents didn't break up until after he himself was married, confirms that ``when the rug is pulled out from under you emotionally, it isn't necessarily an advantage to be standing on your own two feet.'' Divorce registers differently in Italy, per Tim Parks's chronicle of a friend's intoxicating affair, and in Japan, where self- fulfillment American style doesn't come easily, as Richard Gilman and his current wife discovered at great cost. But self-examination is the same everywhere, as these essays too often attest. (First serial to the New Yorker, New York Times Magazine, Redbook)
Pub Date: Feb. 21, 1997
ISBN: 0-15-100115-4
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
A credulity-straining first-person narrative by an adoptive mother who recounts in graphic detail the anguish of raising an extremely dysfunctional boy whom she comes to believe has been the victim of satanic ritual abuse. In 1984, Smith (a pseudonym), identified only as a former English teacher, took in ten-year-old Alex as a foster child to bring in money when her husband, a contractor, was injured and unable to work. The Smiths, who live on a 20-acre farm in Massachusetts and whose own children were grown, soon became attached to the troubled, unpredictable, sometimes violent youngster and two years later began proceedings to adopt him. Young Alex repeatedly experienced flashbacks, going in and out of hypnotic states in which eight other personalities, or alters, would assume control. Through them, Smith gradually learned details of the sexual abuse suffered by Alex as a child. All of Alex's descriptions of sex with adults and animals, mutilating horses, ritual killing of infants, burying babies alive, and other horrendous acts are taken at face value by Smith, who has the vocabulary of a psychotherapist and apparently took extensive notes throughout Alex's adolescence. Alex was in and out of numerous mental institutions and was treated by various therapists, one of whom, Dr. Steven J. Kingsbury, successfully used hypnotism to help Alex control his dissociative states. The measured prose of Kingsbury's afterword on trauma, multiple personality disorder, and hypnosis is a welcome antidote to Smith's emotion-laden memoir. While one's sympathies are initially with this heroic woman tirelessly mothering an extraordinarily difficult child, suspicion grows that one has been seduced into reading a tract on, or rather against, satanism.
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-312-17196-X
Page Count: 288
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1997
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
