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Mother on Fire: A True Motherf%#$@ Story About Parenting! [Paperback]

Sandra Tsing Loh (Author)
4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (25 customer reviews)

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Book Description

August 4, 2009
This is a story about the year I exploded into flames...which turns out to be more common than you’d think among forty-something humans. Yeah, we can hold it together in our thirties, with a raft of hair products and semi-tall nonfat half-caf beverages....Come the forties, though, cracks begin to appear....Gourmet coffee splats; the wig slips askew. In other words, my friends, THE WHEELS COME OFF.

Sandra Tsing Loh is the fiercest, funniest, and most incredibly honest voice to emerge from the "mommy war" debates. Here she fires away with her trademark satire of societal and personal irks, prompted by her own midlife crisis, when she realizes she can’t afford private school for her daughter–and her only alternative is her neighborhood’s beyond-repair public school.

Mother on Fire documents Loh’s "year of living dangerously" among pompous school admissions officials, Prius-driving parents, vindictive bosses, and old friends with new money as she first kisses ass–and then kicks it.

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Radio commentator and performer Loh (A Year in Van Nuys) has penned a hilarious memoir with the same title as her one-woman comedy show, which ran for seven months in Los Angeles. The story begins as a droll little breeze that soon sucks the reader into a frenzied whirlwind as Loh recounts her harrowing quest to find a suitable kindergarten for Hannah, her four-year-old daughter (Loh habitually calls Isabel, her two-year-old, simply The Squid). Spurned by the local Lutheran school (which deems the precocious Hannah not developmentally ready), Loh vaults from pricey and competitive private institutions to public school settings, discovering that the chances of Hannah making it into the desirable public magnet school are minuscule, and only one in 20 is admitted to the idyllic private school, Wonder Canyon, which costs $22,500 per year. Loh is prone to insomnia, expletives (she's fired from her radio spot for using the F word on air), panic (panic attacks are my booster rockets) and exaggeration as she grapples with rejection, middle age, friendship, a clueless but lovable guitar-playing husband and a brilliant but eccentric Chinese father. All parents who have searched for an ideal school for their youngster (and even those who haven't) will be snared by Loh's crackling prose. (Aug.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Review

"[Loh has transformed] herself into the foaming mouthpiece of dissent and outrage over the state of public education....Her language is imaginatively twisted and fearless."
Los Angeles Times

"A droll rant...[Loh]’s not afraid to touch on issues of class and race in a way that’s both humorous and trenchant....Mother on Fire offers much to entertain the many mothers among us."
Washington Post

"Loh’s ability to write a book about a year in the life of a mom...all the while eliciting at least one snort of laughter per page, is no less than a feat of genius."
New York Times (Editor’s Choice)

Product Details

  • Paperback: 320 pages
  • Publisher: Three Rivers Press; Reprint edition (August 4, 2009)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0307450414
  • ISBN-13: 978-0307450418
  • Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.6 x 8 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (25 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #102,157 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

25 Reviews
5 star:
 (13)
4 star:
 (4)
3 star:
 (4)
2 star:
 (3)
1 star:
 (1)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
4.0 out of 5 stars (25 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars CRACKED ME UP!, August 15, 2008
I read all the "motherhood" books, and they're usually so serious and dry. This one is hilarious! It's like the books my mom used to read about the subject - really funny, and (I know this sounds kind of sappy) uplifting. I'm going to suggest it at my next book group meeting - we need a laugh!
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14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Buy this for your women friends instead of more scented soap, August 17, 2008
By 
Anthro Mom (Riverside, CA USA) - See all my reviews
Once again, Sandra Tsing Loh has massaged her very specific life into themes that touch the heart, providing plenty of laughs but also a lot to think about. With witty side trips, the author takes us on an invigorating journey from the sweet exhaustion of keeping up with small children through the frantic exhaustion of trying to find a decent school, and ends up with a new sense of purpose and community. Buy it; read it aloud if you can stop laughing; buy more for your friends!

Favorite theme: "It seems there's no rite of female passage that can't be marked, in some vague way, by a little hay-strewn basket of bath items. As if to say 'Happy Graduation! Have a bath.' 'So you're thirty-seven! Have a bath.' 'Wishing you a fabulous divorce, and menopause! Rock on, sister, and ... try a bath.'" Watch how deftly this becomes a manifesto against Women as Mere Consumers.
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Side-splitting, August 30, 2008
By 
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Very, very funny and well-written. Ms. Tsing-Loh does satire, irony and self-deprecation much better than she does anger. The book is hilarious up to the last two chapters which fall flat and should have been omitted and one does sense in them more than a faint whiff of sour grapes. The NPR ending is in retrospect inevitable, but buy the book and enjoy it!
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