First-time author Pols fashions an earnest, endearing memoir about how she hit her late 30s without a mate, but still managed to beat her biological clock. Finding herself pregnant at 39 after picking up a cute 29-year-old named Matt at a Bay Area bar, the author, the youngest of a large Catholic family from Maine, resolved to make a go at single motherhood. A successful film critic, if not exactly rich, she nonetheless figured out (with the help of her devoted circle of friends and family) a plan to live and raise the baby, including residing for a spell in a friend's trailer while pregnant. She barely knows her baby daddy, whom she portrays as sweet, if mostly directionless and unemployed. Her book good-naturedly traces some of the early hurdles of her experience, such as telling the Grinch (her father), finding out the sex of the baby and trying to sneak into a film screening with her infant. Candid and unaffected, Pols provides an important lesson about not being willing to compromise herself, and that being brave can bring the richest rewards. (June)
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Heidi Julavits, author of The Uses of Enchantment
"Astutely witty...will grip you to the very last page. This is a feminist tale for our age."
Publishers Weekly
"Candid and unaffected, Pols provides an important lesson about not being willing to compromise herself, and that being brave can bring the richest rewards."
Kirkus Reviews
"Bay Area film critic Pols chronicles her unexpected pregnancy and journey into not-quite-single motherhood….A page-turner by someone who stopped waiting for Mr. Perfect."
Elle
"It’s funny, intimate, wise, and real, and we get to root for fortysomething Mary, her twentysomething coparent, Matt, and their little son, Dolan, now four."
BookPage
"… a well-written, emotionally honest memoir of Pols’ journey to motherhood and increased maturity…. She details with wit and humor her efforts to juggle her many challenges…"
Entertainment Weekly
"[Pols writes] with humor and grace...It’s rare to find such honesty, even in an account so personal. Grade: A-"
Cookie Magazine
"Much as Pols’s story resembles the Judd Apatow movie, it is distinct in its heartfelt description of a woman who has come up against the edge of youth and expectation."
Minneapolis Star Tribune
"Her writing is mesmerizing and lyrical. I laughed and cried and shook my head at some of her choices, but I rooted for her and her son the whole way."
San Francisco Chronicle
"Sharp, witty and slightly self-deprecating, she alternates clever, camera-ready one-liners with intense self-revelations about parents, children, love and family….
Entertainment Weekly
"[Pols writes] with humor and grace. . . . It’s rare to find such honesty, even in an account so personal. Grade: A-"
Product Description
At thirty-nine, movie critic Mary Pols knew she wanted to have a baby. But never—not in a million years—on her own. To take on the physical, emotional, and financial challenges of motherhood without a perfect soul mate/husband would be absurd, kind of like not bothering to use a condom during a one-night stand with an adorable but jobless guy ten years her junior.
Pols spends the ensuing weeks despairing over everything, from the financial nightmare of single motherhood to the end of her hopes for a traditional life. Not the least of her worries is finding the right way to drop the bombshell on loved ones, including her five siblings and eighty-four-year-old father, who has a German temper and an Irish Catholic attitude toward babies out of wedlock. Yet faced with the frightening, lonely truth that this might be her only chance at motherhood, she plunges ahead with the pregnancy and an Odd Couple version of a co-parenting relationship that looks like one more disaster in a long line of romantic disappointments. But even as she tries to give her son’s young father a radical makeover, she realizes that his devotion and love for their child matters more than his spotty résumé or his inability to remember to put oil in the car. With humor, insight, and compelling honesty, Pols reveals what it means to compromise in the name of love and to find joy in an accidental life, suddenly brimming with purpose.
About the Author
A native of Maine, mary pols lives with her son, Dolan, in Northern California. A former staff writer for the Los Angeles Times, the Seattle Times, and the Los Angeles Daily News, she was the film critic for the Contra-Costa Times for nearly a decade. She has taught at the University of California-Berkeley and was a Knight Fellow at Stanford. She is working on her second book.
