Customer Reviews

Family Man

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This a light and wonderful read - especially if you have experienced any significant part of the world about which Trillin writes - be it the mysteries, nuances, surprises and joys of being a connected parent - or the delightful pleasures of real New York City neighborhood living - and, even if you have missed those things, Trillin wings you lightly along on his entertaining personal flight - great literature, no - highly enjoyable, yes.

This book is a must for New Yorkers past and present to smell and taste again the reasons you can't ever really leave the big apple. Non- New Yorkers might better understand the sometimes inexplicable loyalty that some of us have to life in the big city. Calvin Trillin is the warm and self-effacing eccentric at the head of this charming urban family group and his folksy style will win your heart in no time. When asked for advice on parenting, his best wisdom is "Try to get one that doesn't spit up." He is the father who gets hooked on every family ritual that they invent or stumble upon and carries the torch for them long after the kids have grown up and left home. He also becomes the repository for the unique Trillin family language and it's colorful history. You'll want to sign up for the next Trillin family gathering and you'll never want to go home. This is a truly lovely read and the perfect antidote to Kenneth Starr and other icons of cynicism! .

I really enjoyed this book at lot. Lots of amusing stories about family life, New York life, ex-Midwestern life.

Living 60 miles from Trillum's Kansas City home town related to some of his Midwest episodes. The "Chigger" secton was very funny, even though I was scratching my own bites while reading.

I especially liked the stories about the Halloween parades, and taking the kid to the local community musical productions.

Lots of funny lines; I kept reading aloud from it to my wife -- she ended up reading the book to.

I have long thought that Calvin Trillin was one of the best, and most verstile, writers around. Here, he is in the gentle but comic territory of Travels With Alice. Some of us wish that he would take on weightier stuff, as he did early on in An Education In Georgia and more recently in Remembering Denny. Nevertheless, a very good read, particularly for those of us with kids.

This is an inspiring book giving words to what it feels like to be a parent and live in a family. It gives hope in a period where there is cynicism in just about everything. This could be a gift to a couple expecting a child and it could be used for a good discussion about parenting. It is also a great read for anyone. It shows what is often forgotten--parenting is not a science, it is an art. Trillin is certainly an artist.

I lost my first copy of this book when I visited a relative in the hospital and she asked if I had anything she could read. I liked it enough to go get another one. This is not a "and then we did this and then the next month we did that" sort of diary. Trillin describes the things his family liked to do together, and gradually the picture emerges: parents deeply involved with their children, not talking down to them or treating them as lil' tykes, but giving them a rich family life that includes a well-rounded cultural education (which sounds stuffy: it isn't).

Trillin's philosophy is "Either your children are the center of your life, or they're not," and this book details how he and his wife Alice centered their life around their daughters - involving themselves but never helicoptering. This is a lovely story.

I have read some columns by Calvin Trillin in the past, but not much more. I found this book about life with his wife and daughters very sweet and funny. He clearly loves them all very much, and they him. Lots of gentle ribbing from all sides along with poignant observations of his little girls growing up. Yet he never veers too far into saccharine territory. It's nice to read something so heartfelt and also so well written.

This book is a collection of 16 essays by Calvin Trillin on the joys and travails of life with children. He has two daughters -- Abigail and Sarah -- and raised them with his wife Alice in Manhattan. (Although raising a family in Manhattan might make it seem like Mr. Trillin is from a rarefied world inaccessible to most of us, I found his writing to be down-to-earth, relatable and his observations about parenting to be fairly universal.) Mr. Trillin is a gifted writer, and I enjoyed reading his thoughts on family life immensely. He has an obvious love for his family, a great eye for detail, and a wonderful sense of humor.

This was my first time reading a book by Calvin Trillin. I'd heard of him and seen quotes by him and realized he was perhaps an important contemporary writer, but I'd never taken the time to read one of his books. I can unequivocally tell you that I will be reading more by Mr. Trillin as I think he might be the kind of writer who could write about virtually anything and I would enjoy reading it.

This isn't a book that begs for an in-depth review. It is an easy, humorous, enjoyable read that documents the author's life with his two daughters and his thoughts on parenting. More than anything, this book made me wish I could live in the Trillin family. Mr. Trillin seems like a wonderful father with an amusing and fun personality. I was particularly drawn to his love of Halloween, his obvious affection for his wife, and the family's dedication to making elaborate home movies. I wanted to grow up in the Trillin household!

While I was reading, I kept marking sections of the book to showcase passages that I think illustrate what a reader can expect in this book. I ended up having so many that I'm just going to go through and pick three or four that will give you the best "feel" for this book.

When our older daughter, Abigail, was four years old, she attended a progressive nursery school in lower Manhattan that was sweet and nurturing and, if I may say so, a little bit earnest. It was the sort of place where teachers would say to a kid who had just attacked another kid, "Use words not hands, dear." (At one point, we all began to wonder exactly what the words for sneaking up behind another kid and pulling her hair might be. All I could think of was something like "I'm a nasty little beast who deserves a good hiding.")

I tried to fulfill the mandate every American has to convince his children that they have a cushy deal compared with the deprivations and tribulations he had to face as a child. At one point, of course, I had to quit telling them that when I was a little boy in Kansas City, my sister, Sukey, and I walked ten miles barefoot through the snow just to get to school every morning. They got old enough to check it out. This is always an awkward transition for a parent -- the onset of what I think of as the age of independent confirmation of data. It seems to come rather suddenly. One moment, your daughters are accepting everything you say without reservation...the next moment, you've got a couple of private eyes in the house.

But we all felt that keeping a dog in the city would be too difficult. That left cats. When the girls were asked why we didn't have one, they always said "Daddy hates cats," to which I always replied, "No, girls, hating cats would be prejudice, and Mommy and I have tried to bring you up to oppose prejudice whenever you encounter it. What might be fair to say is that I have never met a cat I liked."

At the very least, parents wonder whether they should worry. I always found it comforting when I'd come across something I could decide not to worry about. Then I could cross it off the list. When Sarah was little, she had an imaginary friend named Craig Binnger. "Imaginary friends are supposed to have names like Jack or Popo or Tillie-bear," I said to Alice. "How come her friend sounds like a life insurance salesman?" Should we worry about that? No.

About the Author
Calvin Trillin is the author 19 previous books, including American Fried, Travels with Alice, Remembering Denny and Messages from My Father. A long-time staff writer for The New Yorker, he also wrote a column for Time and a weekly poem for The Nation. He was raised in Kansas City, Missouri and lives in New York City.

Final Thoughts
A fun, smart, delightful collection of essays on family life by a gifted writer. I'll definitely be reading more books by Mr. Trillin.

I like where Trillin is going with this, but it just didn't do much for me. As a twenty-something recent college grad, I could relate more with Trillin's daughters than with him.

I sort of stumbled across this book and thought it looked like a fun read (I thought that it was going to be more of a novel than a memoir about him raising his children). I was not familiar with Trillin before reading this book (knew nothing of "Alice" and had never read his "tummy trilogy"), and I felt a little out of the loop, since this has more of an autobiographical feel and he makes several references to his past works.

The book has a light feel, isn't difficult to read, but I recommend it for audiences who perhaps have raised children and seen them leave the nest or for those who are familiar with Mr. Trillin's other writings.

Trillin is terrific and I only wish I had had a husband like him. I am moving on to his other books as soon as I can get them.