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20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Amusing slacker parenting memoir, January 15, 2007
Although I preferred the author's prior "Neal Pollack" persona, I found Alternadad to be an enjoyable read. At its best, Pollack's writing here reminds me vaguely of Nick Hornby's fiction about men-children assuming new responsibilities (High Fidelity, About a Boy) and David Sedaris's essays, which often portray intensely human moments against the backdrop of dysfunctional family relationships. You can get a sense of what Pollack's new voice is like if you visit his eponymous nealpollack blog.
The memoir covers Pollack's journey from privileged teen in the high upper middle class suburbs of Phoenix to mid-30s college graduate with wife and child. Along the way, he establishes that he and his wife pursue a nonconformist lifestyle, refusing to work for anyone but themselves. He is a freelance writer, and she is an artist. He also writes candidly about his relationship with pot. If this book had been published in the early 1990s, I'm sure Pollack and his wife would have been labeled Gen X slackers. (The vogue term, apparently, is hipsters.)
The choice of a nonconformist lifestyle has its costs, including downward mobility. Much of Alternadad describes the trials, tribulations, and tensions the Pollacks endure shortly before and after their son is born. It's clear that they want to be good parents to their son. However, lack of means forces them to confront hard realities. Healthcare isn't cheap. Daycare isn't cheap. An organic diet isn't cheap. Good housing isn't cheap. Pot isn't cheap. The privileged, secure life of the high upper middle class doesn't grow on trees.
At the same time, having a son also presents new non-monetary obligations and responsibilities that tax the do-what-you-want-when-you-want-to aspect of their lifestyle. Irrespective of dad's desire to cruise the bars or make the music scene, the kid needs care and demands attention. And then there are the behavioral issues in daycare . . . .
Alternadad also exposes the influence of media and information overload on young parents. Pollack's wife seems to jump on the Internet at every turn, looking for answers to everything from pressing health questions (e.g., what do you do when your toddler has spaghetti up his nose) to concerns about diet and schooling. Television--and especially children's television--also figures prominently in the Pollack household. Pollack offers some entertaining observations about the various characters that are all too familiar to parents of recent vintage.
I'm sure many will disagree with parenting decisions that the Pollacks made. And some of those decisions are cringeworthy. However, that's part of what learning to be parents is all about. If you can hold your judgment of those decisions in abeyance, Alternadad is an amusing book about a youngish couple's efforts to raise a kid in our media-saturated consumer society.
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69 of 83 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
NEAL'S FINEST, January 9, 2007
Long before he secured actual, competent representation, I briefly served as Neal Pollack's professional literary agent. Therefore, my opinion may be somewhat biased, in the sense that I feel for him the same kind of weary I felt for all of my old bloodsucking clients, the ones who kept bothering me all day with their money troubles while I was trying to drink brandy and play minesweeper (that means you, Bruce Campbell!)
But I will confess that ALTERNADAD was a complete and happy surprise to me--hilarious, as all Neal's work is, but heartfelt and true. This book is fully deblustered of the old "Neal Pollack, Greatest Living Writer" persona of his seminal early work, replaced instead by an even older "Neal Pollack" going back to his days at the "Chicago Reader:" the just-plain-good-writer full of caustic wit and human sympathy.
This is a story that documents a new kind of hipster parental mood in some respects, but it is really a much simpler story about a man who loves his wife and son. Neal's ability to say just that puts paid to any rumor that he was ever merely a 90's era irony-drenched ha ha man, and makes ALTERNADAD the best third-book debut I've ever read.
That is all.
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10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Laughing down Hwy 101, January 15, 2007
After seeing glowing reviews for this book in Texas Monthly and Men's Health, I bought this book with the credit I got for returning a copy of Kinky Friedman's book I'd been given as a gag gift. I read it aloud to my girlfriend as we drove our way down the Oregon coastal highway, and it made the miles fly by. We laughed along, cooed at the cute pics of Neal's kid, Elijah, and were deeply shaken by the similarities between our lives and the scene Pollack paints as his pre-daddy days.
Yes, the book has been done before - as in Bill Cosby's Fatherhood and Paul Reiser's Babyhood. But Pollack offers his own alternate edge and provides what may ironically be the definition of mainstream fatherhood for our generation.
I truly appreciate how this book holds nothing back and allows to see Neal's family in its most unvarnished state. There are no (obvious) secrets and nothing is off-limits.
My only criticism of the book is that it seems to run out of steam about 3/4 of the way through the book. And because of the nature of the fact that Elijah and his parents are still growing and learning, there's no conclusion. Nonetheless, I was still left with a need for more closure as I turned the last page of the book. Perhaps that's why I still visit the blog every once in a while.
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