Breezy fun.
Lighthearted, mostly humorous memoir of suburban motherhood based on the author's nationally syndicated column.
Published by more than 400 newspapers in 25 states, Beckerman's column inspired an eponymous blog (lostinsuburbia.net), and her funny accounts of situations running the gamut from mundane to outrageous have resonated with readers, particularly mothers of young children. This book opens with a scene in which the always self-deprecating Beckerman, on an afternoon school run to pick up her daughter, was pulled over by a police officer who dryly observed that she was wearing her bathrobe. Chapter titles, including "I'm Not Fat, I'm Just Pregnant. Okay, I'm Fat, Too" and " 'P' Is for Parenting and Prozac," in addition to Beckerman's tone, are consistently zippy and dramatic. She includes plenty of confrontations, like the scene in which her husband discovered she got a tattoo at age 35, as well as internal monologues riffing on the less-appealing aspects of motherhood, such as the lack of time to take a shower. The tattoo and subsequent chopping off of her hair are ascribed to Beckerman's desire to be "cool" again, the way she was pre-motherhood when she worked in TV and lived in Manhattan. These efforts string the chapters together with the theme of the reignition of her individuality. Feeling that people look down on mothers, she acknowledges that "the second we become moms we start to let ourselves go." Beckerman doesn't want to lose herself in motherhood, and her "momoir" offers entertaining vignettes about balancing her responsibilities at home with her quest to tap into her true self.
Breezy fun.Pub Date: April 2, 2013
ISBN: 978-0399159930
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Perigee/Penguin
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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