A MOTHER'S PLACE IS IN THE WRONG

My mother always told me that when one gets to a certain age, one starts reading more non-fiction than fiction.  Perhaps she was right:  I'm someone who used to inhale novels;  I find now that I'm more and more grabbed by the autobiographical.  Perhaps the distinction anyway is irrelevant:  all that matters when reading is the writing, the voice;  but it's a obvious that we gravitate towards those books that deal with issues that  touch our own lives.  So naturally I had to buy a book called BAD MOTHER:  A Chronicle of Maternal Crimes, Minor Calamities, and Occasional Moments of Grace.  I have often felt that it is impossible to be a mother without a profound, even corrosive, sense of failure, or at least that's how I feel about myself.  To find a book that shares that anxiety, and an author who dissects this insecurity and self-doubt with wit, honesty and proper, enquiring intelligence, is (as a reader) like being grossly dehydrated and being presented with a vat of water to drink.  Some might find her honesty just a little too revealing (my children would never speak to me again if I wrote so openly about them!) but that's also what gives the book its credibility.  I am sad to have finished it, and feel I want to be in the company of her frank intelligence forever.  In fact, the minute I finished this (last night at 2am) I went on Amazon and ordered one of her novels, Love And Other Impossible Pursuits.

Buy BAD MOTHER: A Chronicle of Maternal Crimes, Minor Calamities, and Occasional Moments of Grace, for just £13.57 from Amazon.co.uk and $16.47 from Amazon.com.
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