Customer Reviews

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

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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!

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.

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!

In this book Sandra Tsing Loh recounts her efforts to get her daughter into a kindergarten that she (Sandra) considers to be of acceptable quality. Being a denizen of the NPR set, she expects her daughter to be in a much better school than average kids end up in even though her income doesn't support the quest, and even though she doesn't really seem to believe that money should buy educational opportunity (except for her kids).

The book is largely a series of linked stories, which is good, as Sandra is at her best as a miniaturist. In fact, the book lags a bit toward the end when she finally has her daughter in school, and narrates an extended session with her therapist. For the most part, however, this book is an amusing send up of the pretensions of wealth, fame, and the educational community, and of the fear of achieving parents toward the vast, "unwashed" mass of real children out there. Some good laughs are on offer in this book, and it will certainly appeal to fans of Sandra's earlier works.

I really wanted to like this book. A friend told me about the Target pants, so I picked it up. And I *did* laugh---sometimes. The couples without children who whip out photos of their dogs at dinner parties ring true. But, as the author should have recognized, mothers with small children have very limited time, and there is just too much "filler" here
---too many sentences that have purposefully been crafted to be clever. Even skimming through this one was tough going, and I abandoned it in the end. See if your library can find you a copy before you lay your money down.

The author has taken her comedy routine on motherhood and fleshed it out into a book length memoir (a la Lily Tomlin). Her humorous obserations on the desire to be the perfect parent for fear of failing her infants forever is so American, for those parents who can afford $20,000+ for kindergarten. She fearlessly exposes her neurotic tendencies upon the reader and one wonders how her children will make out when they are teenagers. The book flows in a stream of consciousness conversational style that the reader needs to buy into or the reader will be annoyed. Overall "Mother on Fire" is a funny book.

This book is a truly hysterical study of the life of any parent trying to decide where to send their kids to school. The author brings poignant humor to experiences that any parent will relate to. Thinking of sending your preschooler to private school? Then you will have to read this book. Don't be put off by the title -- it is truly worth reading.

The author is VERY funny and right on target when taking apart LAUSD and the LA scene which is extremely plastic and power focussed. Sandra not only thinks she has to solve her family's problems but lies awake at night trying to solve the whole world's problems while her husband, who grew up in So. Dakota peacefully sleeps. That is the angst one can have after growing up in Malibu and then living in Van Nuys. It is a laugh out loud book that needs to be savored in small doses because Sandra has so much to say that is thought provoking, especially about her generation's overly involved "parenting." That is my opinion as a person who brought up her children in the 70's when we stressed independence and self-reliance with lots of love. Actually, I was doing that while living across the street from Sandra and her family in Malibu. Buy the book, you will love reading it!

i just finished this book last night and it was one of those reads where you count the remaining unread pages in remorse that the fun will soon beover. a few days before, i had started to read another book on parenting, "Perfect Madness" by Judith Warner and it just got too heavy, so this was the perfect antidote.

i was a casual fan of Sandra Tsing Loh's radio show, and after reading this, will be checking out her other books. she is hilarious but not afraid to address the issues - not afraid to be un-PC in order to make a bigger point. she can be caustic at times, but it's effective in this context of the crazy mom's search for the best education for her child.

we should all be inspired to laugh, take on the bureacuracy that is the public school system, and smell good with our overfilled cabinets of scented soaps while we're at it! now, let's see if i can bare to open "Perfect Madness" again...

I have been reading Loh since her very frist book came out. Even dragged my husband to one of her shows in San Jose a while back, which I enjoyed emmensely. I have eagerly bought every one of her books. Why? because she is so right on, so without shame or pretense, about all aspects of her life. So without PCness. She is one of a kind. This particular book is so touching. Funny, witty, and honest.