Customer Reviews

Amanda Bright@home

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(13)
2 star:		(12)
1 star:		(14)

 

 

As a first time mom (stuggling with the "work or stay at home" dilemma) and a DC beltway refugee, I assumed I would find some resonance in this book. Boy, was I wrong.

First, there are no really likable characters. Amanda is ambivalent to the point of irritation. Her husband is emotionally distant and dismissive. Her "friends" are truly awful - rich, vain, and totally self centered. Her relationship with her two small children often seems devoid of genuine affection.

She is ashamed of every aspect of her life: her modest house, her used car, the behavior of her "robust" 5 year-old son.

She lives in an ethnically and economically diverse neighborhood within the DC city line, yet chooses to hang out with a bunch of rich women from the burbs, all the while feeling inferior and embarassed.

Note to Amanda: load your kids into the stroller and take a walk through your own neighborhood. You'll probably find 5 other moms who, like you, cannot afford to redecorate their houses, have their eyes done, or summer somehwere exotic. You'd be much happier sitting in your back yard with them drinking cheap wine than joining these snotty woman at their country club.

It's true that women who decide to have children cannot "have it all," but they can come a hell of a lot closer, and be a hell of a lot happier than this.

Being a stay-at-home mom, I, like many others here, thought that this would be a fun story that I could completely relate to. Boy, was I wrong! Amanda Bright doesn't cook, doesn't clean, and almost never has to interact with her children. The whole time I read this book, I kept wondering what it was that she did with her time besides feel sorry for herself. I wanted to yell at her, "If you aren't happy, do something about it, but for goodness sake, stop WHINING and do some laundry already!!" She placed all the blame for her unhappiness on her husband, then couldn't believe it when he told her to do what made her happy. She wanted him to tell her what to do. Uhh...did I miss something? I'm pretty sure women are welcome to do as they please nowadays. As a Republican, I cringed much of the time at Crittenden's portrayal of liberals and feminists as compassionless villains, out to topple her pedestal of righteousness. I also found her message of stay-at-home parents making huge sacrifices laughable, considering how inept she was at it, and how empty it left her. What does she know about the sacrifices it takes? When did she ever make the effort? She claimed that she was sacrificing her happiness for the sake of her children, yet they exasperated her simply by being kids. Someone needs to tell her that staying home is a personal choice that some people have the privilege to make, but if you can't stand to be around your own children, it's probably not the right decision for you.

Without giving away too much of the plot, I have to say that this book disappointed me. When I first heard of the book, I was excited! I thought this was going to be a story about a woman just like me, a stay at home mom with dreams of a career but also the desire to stay home and raise her own children. Sure, I identifed with Amanda a little, but I also felt like she just complained too much. Of course, it's incredibly hard to give up your job, and of course, it's even tougher to stay home all day with children, but she could have applied herself a little more and did more with her life! I was just frustrated! I wante Amanda to inspire me, to fill me with gratitude because I have these precious moments at home. I wanted her to prove that you can have a life and have children too.

Needless to say, I didn't enjoy it as much as I wanted to, but maybe that was the point the author was trying to make... You can't have everything. However, my philosophy is a little different... enjoy what you do have.

As a professional and an ex-military man that decided to stay home to take care of our son, I was interested when I heard about the book. I too would describe myself as politically conservative and a proponent of traditional family values, like Danielle. I believe that the country needs to know about millions of fellow Americans who discover that full-time child rearing (one of the greatest responsibilitites a person can shoulder, yet considered shameful and inadequate in popular culture) is more fulfilling than a professional career.

This book is not the best way, though.

First of all, I was put off by the fact that practically everyone aside from Amanda, her husband and children were portrayed as villains or losers. Her mother, her best friend, all the other stay-at-home parents she knows are unpleasant, selfish, and plain-creepy. Maybe this is supposed to be fashionable and funny, but it's the kind of shallow, fluffy chracterization I would expect from TV shows for urban singles, not a writer that is trying to say something about what it is like to stay home in a career-obsessed culture. There is a stay-at-home father in the book also, and predictably, he is described as a complete wimp. Believe me, I'm a former Marine and I've needed all the physical and mental conditioning I got in the military to raise our boy for the past four years. I don't know any stay-at-home parents that are wimps (you can't cut it in this job if you are), and this stuff made me think that Danielle may not actually know a lot of real parents, ones without nannies to do their dirty work.

Another thing that made me think they should rewrite the copy on the back is that there's not a whole lot of child rearing going on in Amanda's life. She's not a stay-at-home mom as much as stay-at-home wife, constantly talking about her husband's career. The kids don't get a lot of air time.

Somebody needs to write this book again, and do it right.

I wanted to love this book. I wanted to read a book about the struggles, sacrifices, and joys of being a stay-at-home mother. Instead, I read about a whiny, self-absorbed woman who made everyone around her miserable. Amanda martyrs herself by staying at home with her kids because it was the same financially as paying for 2 kids to go to daycare. She also says she feels like that is what she is obligated (through guilt)to do. Um, those aren't really good reasons for staying at home to raise your children. Amanda would have been better off going back to work and quitting her b*tching and whining about how bad her kids are and how useless her husband is. At least the daycare teachers might not have thought of her children as big of a burden as Amanda did.

Bob's job was also took up WAY too much of this book. The whole Megabyte case and everything involved in that storyline were boring and almost totally unnecessary to the main storyline. I started to skip the pages dealing with that subplot because it was totally irrelevant.

We mothers who choose to stay home to raise our families and keep our homes full-time deserve a better book than this. We need a book about how hard the decision is, but how great the rewards are. If you are a SAHM looking for a boost, you're not going to get it here! I wish I could have loved the book as much as I wanted to.

What a complete waste of my time. I'm a working mother of two. The description on the back made it seem as if this woman was me. She is so far from anyone I know. I don't like her. I can't understand how she can't make any worthwhile friends. The ending was ridiculous and contrived. Whole book was an utter letdown.

God, I hated this book. As a working mother of three who lives in the DC area, I had hoped to be able to relate to "Amanda" or at least some of her friends. Instead, I found myself irritated by the author's thinly-veiled political agenda and her disdain for feminism, liberal democrats, and children with peanut allergies. Moreover, Crittenden is a terrible writer. Ugh. Avoid at all costs and seek out the far more witty "I Don't Know How She Does It".

I identified totally with this book and urge every woman, and man, to read it. Amanda is struggling with the same issues that thousands of women are facing and she feels at sea. There are few guideposts or templates anymore for the formerly professional woman now turned homemaker, a job she never imagined she would have or want. It's not surprising she occasionally feels self-pity -- most of us do at times. What makes the book inspiring is that she finally is able to transcend those feelings and move on to a whole new and better way of thinking. The other great thing about this book is that it is laugh-out-loud funny and you won't want to put it down. Amanda is sometimes bedraggled, but what saves her is her great sense of humor. And you will recognize many of the supporting characters is this novel -- and they are just as true, because I know some of them.

The negative reviews I've read here prove Danielle Crittenden's point precisely: that there really ARE such incredibly pretentious people as Amanda's friends and the staff at her kids' school, that they are deadly serious about what they are doing, and that they find it perfectly OK to ridicule conservatives, pro-lifers, and evangelical Christians but can't take the heat themselves.

The bit about Ben's peanut butter cookie transgression had me rolling, and I hope Amanda's friend Liz in onto something with her embrace of "motherhood feminism." Only time will tell.

People, this is called SATIRE, and this book ranks up there among the most deliciously nasty one of the conservative variety since Tom Wolfe's "Bonfire of the Vanities" and Cyra McFadden's "The Serial: A Year in the Life of Marin County."

I'm sorry, this book was too boring for me to continue. The spineless main character seems to hang around with vapid women hung up on material wealth and facelifts at the ripe old age of 40! Ha! Amanda is "deeply conflicted" about her role as stay at home mother - yeah, we get it, we get it - do we have to be reminded every other page? Why doesn't she get some new friends? Why doesn't she grow a backbone? Why was I reading this book?!?!?!?