“The experience of motherhood loses nearly everything in its translation to the outside world,” writes Cusk, but that’s...
A powerful, often funny account of pregnancy, childbirth, and mothering that doesn’t gloss over the pain, mystery, and confusion—but does celebrates the wonder.
Britisher Cusk (The Country Life, 1999) brings her novelist’s sensibility to the story of her daughter’s gestation and infancy, and of her own evolution “from a woman to a mother.” All the usual suspects of new motherhood are here—colic, sleep deprivation, patronizing advice books, isolation, breast-feeding, babysitters from hell. As Cusk explores them all with disarming tales of useless advice and failed strategies, she also explores the painful transformation occurring in her, from a vital, engaged, well-regarded literary figure to a brooding and bewildered babyminder. Although the British support system for pregnant women and new mothers is renowned, she encounters what will be a nine-month siege of bureaucratic advice and detailed instructions on everything from making salads to making love (illustrated). Terrified of childbirth—and of becoming a mother—she seeks solace in like minds and sometimes in literature, including the works of Edith Wharton, Coleridge, and Charlotte Brontë. In a chapter titled “Don’t Forget to Scream,” she describes moving to a small university town where her infant launches into an adventurous toddlerhood and she into a life surrounded by other mothers enlisted into “self-abnegation.” Invoking Proust on the glories of sleep, she nevertheless wonders if the finally successful battle to teach her baby to sleep alone at night was really the right choice: For this is as much the eloquent story of her daughter’s struggle to find a niche in the universe and of a hard-won but wonderful relationship between mother and daughter as it is of grievances.
“The experience of motherhood loses nearly everything in its translation to the outside world,” writes Cusk, but that’s really not true in this account. Mothers and prospective mothers will find the experience as told here daunting—as well as intact, true, and whole.Pub Date: April 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-312-26987-0
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Picador
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2002
Mostly conservative in its stance and choices but common-sensical and current.
Savvy counsel and starter lists for fretting parents.
New York Times Book Review editor Paul (My Life With Bob: Flawed Heroine Keeps Book of Books, Plot Ensues, 2017, etc.) and Russo, the children’s book editor for that publication, provide standard-issue but deftly noninvasive strategies for making books and reading integral elements in children’s lives. Some of it is easier said than done, but all is intended to promote “the natural, timeless, time-stopping joys of reading” for pleasure. Mediumwise, print reigns supreme, with mild approval for audio and video books but discouraging words about reading apps and the hazards of children becoming “slaves to the screen.” In a series of chapters keyed to stages of childhood, infancy to the teen years, the authors supplement their advice with short lists of developmentally appropriate titles—by their lights, anyway: Ellen Raskin’s Westing Game on a list for teens?—all kitted out with enticing annotations. The authors enlarge their offerings with thematic lists, from “Books That Made Us Laugh” to “Historical Fiction.” In each set, the authors go for a mix of recent and perennially popular favorites, leaving off mention of publication dates so that hoary classics like Janice May Udry’s A Tree Is Nice seem as fresh as David Wiesner’s Flotsam and Carson Ellis’ Du Iz Tak? and sidestepping controversial titles and themes in the sections for younger and middle-grade readers—with a few exceptions, such as a cautionary note that some grown-ups see “relentless overparenting” in Margaret Wise Brown’s Runaway Bunny. Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House series doesn’t make the cut except for a passing reference to its “troubling treatment of Indians.” The teen lists tend to be edgier, salted with the provocative likes of Art Spiegelman’s Maus and Angie Thomas’ The Hate U Give, and a nod to current demands for more LGBTQ and other #ownvoices books casts at least a glance beyond the mainstream. Yaccarino leads a quartet of illustrators who supplement the occasional book cover thumbnails with vignettes and larger views of children happily absorbed in reading.
Mostly conservative in its stance and choices but common-sensical and current.Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5235-0530-2
Page Count: 216
Publisher: Workman
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Romance feels deeply liberating in Zalmanek’s hands.
Stories and guidance designed to keep the fires burning in your relationship.
This book is about adventures, unusual and exciting experiences in love–particularly with established couples–that speak of abiding affection. And they speak loudly, because you have to work to keep these adventures moving. They range from daily, loving gestures–the little threads that sew you together–to grand celebrations. Zalmanek, a self-proclaimed “Romantic Adventurer,” begins with the baby steps needed to get started. Fearless where she treads, Zalmanek is happy to give tips on everything from marriage proposals to divorce ceremonies. Each chapter is filled with episodes of romantic adventure intended to jump-start the imagination in the form of illustrative stories from people who have taken one of her workshops. She stresses the importance of being an attentive and aware mate–to understand your lover’s surprise quotient, for example–to explore the sensual acts that please the two of you, to learn how to give (and receive) unexpected gifts and to develop your own romantic traditions. She wants you to cherish the act of intimacy, to step back for a moment, regain some perspective and realize how important it is to keep adding fuel to the fire that drives your romance. Best of all, she makes it sound like an awful lot of fun.
Romance feels deeply liberating in Zalmanek’s hands.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-9766879-0-9
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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