Customer Reviews

Making It Up As I Go Along: A Novel

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I stumbled upon this book at the library, thought the story seemed interesting from the jacket summary. I am so glad I found this book! If this is considered chick lit, it definitely is a more sophisticated kind of chick lit. It deals with more serious issues such as war, poverty, Africa, etc. But you can still enjoy it as a chick lit novel ... meaning the politics of the issues I mentioned above do not swallow the story. It seems like the author may have used some of her own life experiences (London School of Economics references, etc.) which I always enjoy when an author does that ... makes the novel seem more real. This book is highly recommended by me. Read & enjoy!

After reading this book's more than favorable review in the Denver Post dated 6/19/05, I had to run out to buy it that very day! Upon delving in to the first chapter, I knew I would not be disappointed. Lennon has a unique ability to hook the reader by her funny and accurate insights into human nature. The story's heroine, Saffron, was someone I could relate to and identify with immediately. Although Saffron's story is adventurous and sometimes exotic, anyone who has ever been, or known, a new mother will have compassion for Saffron's real-life dilemma. Saffron's struggle with letting go of her independent, goal-driven past self and opening up to the boundless, albeit non-glamorous, love that she has for her new baby is a life experience that almost every new mother can relate to. Lennon will make you chuckle in recognition as Saffron goes through her transformation and experiences her new reality of changing dirty diapers and getting her baby to properly latch during nursing. Additionally, the contrast between Saffron's life as a war correspondent in the tumultuous political environment of Sierra Leone, with her new life as a single mother amongst the beauty-conscious and superficial mommies in Los Angeles is not only hilarious, but poignant. I was amazed at how Ms. Lennon was able to tell two stories simultaneously while keeping the reader equally involved in each and cognizant of the connection between the two. I especially loved the ending, and was rooting for Saffron all the way as she evolved into someone she didn't know was there, bringing along her flaws of course! This book is definitely a page-turner and will keep you wanting more from this talented new author. I can't wait to see what Lennon has up her sleeve next!

The long, hot, lazy days of summer are somehow just about perfect for certain books. Making It Up As I Go Along by Maria T. Lennon is one of those.

Saffron Roch, a war correspondent who is passionate about her career, leaves Sierra Leone, Africa for her home state of California after learning that her lover, Oscar, a surgeon with Doctors Without Borders, has been unfaithful. To complicate matters, Saffron is pregnant with the arrogant Oscar's child.

California brings another chapter to Saffron's life. She's a single mother to daughter Halla; her adoptive mother, Heaven, has left her a $10 million estate; her brother Francis seems to accept his disinheritance (or does he?); she's struggling between her love for her child and the loss of her career; and then there's the attraction to another man still in Sierra Leone whose life is in danger.

Saffron left the nerve-wracking and dangerous life of chaos and mayhem in war-torn countries for the equally tension-filled life of changing diapers, breastfeeding and coordinating life with baby in tow. Ultimately Saffron must decide about living the safe everyday life she now has in California - or risk all for what is in Africa.

Making It Up As I Go Along weaves two stories: the humorous one of the life Saffron is living in eccentric California and the other darker, intense and dangerous story of Sierra Leone.

As a mother I could identify with all those feelings Lennon so aptly expressed. I also thought about family, career and the choices we women are required to make about them. It does feel that we are making it up as we go along. This book grabbed me and took me along for a heartwarming ride.

After globetrotting the world as a War correspondent thirty-eight years old Saffron "Saffy" Roch returns home to Santa Monica with a newborn Halla and no mate as the father Dr. Oscar remains in Sierra Leone. She feels out of place in the Los Angeles area especially when she meets other nursing mothers at the renowned Santa Monica Pump Station.

Saffy's adoptive mom recently passed away disinheriting her hippie offspring Francis leaving the estate including Malibu Beach property to Saffy with the stipulation she never gets back with Oscar. When another former lover African Joseph Hanna, is incarcerated as a traitor, Saffy decides to intervene by buying his freedom, but must sell the Malibu estate to raise the cash. Meanwhile Francis, pretending to be her friend, obtains help from Saffy's biological mother and Oscar to cheat her out of her inheritance. While nursing, Saffy and Halla go to Africa to prevent an execution.

MAKING IT UP AS I GO ALONG uses contrasts to tell the story of the civil war in Sierra Leone. On one hand is Saffy struggling with American style motherhood amidst the Southern California trophy wives. Though moving between now in chick lit L.A. and then in ravaged Sierra Leone costs continuity, the technique enhances the comparative analysis base of an emphatic story line.

Harriet Klausner

I loved the whole doctors without borders thing, the hot German aid worker, the sultry African United Nations spy, oh, my God, was Joseph hot or what? It was a constant tug of war for who I wanted Saffron, the main character, to end up with. And the whole LA thing was so funny, it made me see how we all take life too seriously sometimes. Highly entertaining and informative. It made me feel grateful for the life I have. Thanks

This is the only book I've chosen over sleep since the birth of my first child a year ago. It pulled me in from the first hysterical breastfeeding scene on page one all the way to the race to the death finish. The part about Africa was an unexpected thrill, giving this book something altogether new. I actually hid in the bathroom to finish it, I loved it so much. Can't wait for the next one.

Most "Mommy-lit" books these days are about women having to chose between work and motherhood, this one is not. This novel is about finding yourself through motherhood, which I thought was a great message. Saffron, the main character, never succumbs to being bullied about being a single-mom, a career-woman, about not fitting in. She rises above it. It's not only a fun read, it's got a very cool message for all of us women who feel different inside. Thanks!

I loved Saffron, the main character in this fantastic new book aboutmotherhood in LA and life beyond it. She was funny and fallible, slightly overweight, and was totally not politically correct. What a breath of fresh air. Mothers here are constantly being told what to do, how to look and what to say--it was fun hanging out with Saffron for those three-hundred and twenty pages, I wish there were more women like her out there!

I really enjoyed this book. I echo all the comments above. More satisfying and intelligent than so much fiction (esp. about women's issues and lives) out there these days.
And I must add, she kept me guessing until the end. I thought I had the outcome figured out, yada, yada good book, etc. But not so fast!
This book is about people of character, choices, matters of the heart, and real, messy, beautiful life.

There's a lot going on in Maria T. Lennon's first novel Making it up as I go Along. Motherhood, property rights, lost love, and the terrible results of a civil war in a far off country all compete for attention. But under the nimble hand of Lennon, each of these issues seems to be effortlessly woven together, and the result is a story that is engaging, stimulating, and also extremely entertaining.

Saffron Roch is thirty-eight years old and has reached a rather salubrious crossroad in her life. Having spent the last few years working as a journalist and foreign correspondent in the war torn country of Sierra Leone, Saffron finally returns to California with Halla, her newborn baby. Halla is the daughter of Oscar DeVries, a handsome German surgeon who worked in Sierra Leone for a medical relief agency. Oscar, however, had been unfaithful.

Upon returning home to Los Angeles, Saffron discovers she has inherited her adoptive mother, Heaven's, Malibu beachfront property worth $10 million. On the surface, her calculating, hippyish brother Francis seems to accept his disinheritance, and Saffron moves into the beach house hoping to heal old animosities. Things however, don't exactly work out as planned, and it soon becomes clear that Francis, a "greedy, marijuana-smoking, mushroom drinking "healer," is trying to block her inheritance and scheming to her the property back.

As Saffron struggles to care for her newborn baby, she pines for the loss of her career as a journalist and longs for Joseph, an enigmatic African she left back in Sierra Leone, whose life she steadily comes to realize, may be in danger. But Saffron doesn't have to face all this on her own: Soon after she arrives in Los Angeles, she joins up with a month long series at the Pumpstation, where she meets an eclectic group of new mothers who are going through the same things, both physically and emotionally at the exact same time.

Saffron eventually becomes close the girls, and begins to spend her days immersed in talk of breast-feeding, diapers, and sleepy-time. But something constantly nags at her, and although the group of affable women draws her to them, she's also haunted by "the need to belong somewhere, sometime," and the invariable need to escape and to get away, to travel, to live someone else's life. At one stage, she even admits that she's had it with the "Pampers vs. Huggies debate; bottle vs. nipple; Beverly hills vs. Beverlywood."

Saffron sees herself as indelibly an outcast. Perhaps she returns to California because her life needed to be tethered to something. From the outset, Heather had persistently drummed into her that that she couldn't have a child with a man like Oscar and that she should come home, away from Oscar, away from Africa, away from harm in all its seductive forms, and also away from that troubled land, "where the boyfriend isn't who you think he is and the job isn't really what you want it to be."

Lennon cleverly weaves Saffron's two stories together: Her journey of motherhood, as she tries to figure out how to raise a new-born on her own, with the darker and more violent story of her encounter with Joseph which takes place against the backdrop of Sierra Leone's civil strife. The author does as fine job of juxtaposing Saffron's vision of the West with her previous life in Africa: She's absolutely shocked at the excesses of Los Angeles - "the sight of full plates of warm food, vegetable and potato being thrown into bulging trash cans without a second of hesitation."

In once instance, Saffron has a vision of the thousands and thousands of Africans who would kill each other just to jump inside of a trash bin of one of the restaurants where were she now sits. Our protagonist ultimately finds herself out of place amid the insulated, pampered L.A. lifestyle, which makes the descriptions of Sierra Leone even more horrifying.

For Saffron, Sierra Leone was exactly like one of its amputated children - it had once been beautiful and its people pure, before the war. The diamonds, and the politicking had "sucked all the goodness out and left nothing but a truncated and dismembered shell," and Freetown was now a human junkyard housing broken lives and dismembered people with its empty graffiti and bundles of plastic-coated sheeting stained red.

There's no doubt that Saffron is an insecure girl, but her worldly experiences have given her an insight into a life that few of her Western girlfriends possess. One of the most poignant moments is when she looks at a young, loving couple standing in line at an ice cream store and wonders whether, in a society that worships appearance more than substance, could any of these relationships endure amputation, rape, financial ruin, or hopelessness?

Saffron's Africa is a place where you either laughed or cried, but are rarely indifferent, and where the pleasures are simple. It's where life is also fragile, and where the good times, are unfortunately, often fleeting. Mike Leonard July 05.