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I often give "Operating Instructions" by Anne Lamott to soon to be mothers and this book is makes a nice follow up for the exhausted new mom. I read it primarily because I have read several of Waldman's other fiction books this summer and wanted to see how she was writing nonfiction.
This is a keen collection of essays about the self-doubts many mother's harbor and a glimpse into the interior of her family life with four children. She doesn't hold back, she tells of her heart breaking decision t ...more
This is a keen collection of essays about the self-doubts many mother's harbor and a glimpse into the interior of her family life with four children. She doesn't hold back, she tells of her heart breaking decision t ...more
A hugely provocative book that also manages to be comforting (at least to me) Waldman has encountered far more aggressively judgmental parents than I have, but I've had the sense that I've been found wanting as a parent as my son has to be hauled crying from some public place. ("Really--I'm teaching him manners, I'm just so exhausted and he's TWO and I can't take another minute...")
Her "Rocketship" chapter is heartbreaking and underscores how a worldview is forever changed by loss. She is treme ...more
Her "Rocketship" chapter is heartbreaking and underscores how a worldview is forever changed by loss. She is treme ...more
This book was just as good as I had hoped. I first heard of Ayelet Waldman on NPR. She was doing an interview and she really caught my attention. Apparently she became "famous" for an essay that she wrote where she stated that she loved her husband more than her children. Apparently mothers were outraged (I however think this statement is completely reasonable. There's a reason that God plans for you to stay with your husband for your whole life and your children are supposed to grow up and leav
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I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Waldman is a very good writer: funny, earnest, and honest. While she does sometime "overshare" personal details (which she admits), she also bravely exposes the secrets, fears and guilt that I suspect most mothers carry, while thinking they're the only ones.
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