Waiting for Birdy: A Year of Frantic Tedium, Neurotic Angst, and the Wild Magic of Growing a Family, by Catherine Newman (2005)
I love this book so much, it is safe to say I want to marry it. I read it in a big slurp, knowing I should slow down and appreciate each word, DRAW it out a little--but unable to, knowing I would have to catch it on the re-read. Then I discovered that the author writes online columns, and so I read 178 of them, one after another. I'm not sure I remembered to shower, eat, etc.
Catherine and Michael have one child, Ben, nearly 3 years old, when they discover they are expecting an unexpected second child. This book is like a journal of that time, starting with the discovery and ending about a year later. The columns start at the same time, but continue to the present.
Doesn't that sound dull? Couldn't you just SCREAM before you have to read even ONE MORE BOOK about a mother's experience with motherhood? But I swear to you, this book is better, different, and fully worth it. I laughed so hard I practically had to be slapped. The way she describes the passion and fury and terror of motherhood is so right-on, it's an excellent primer for anyone considering it. Normally I am a library-book person, but I bought my own copy of this one.
The Good Wife, by Stewart O'Nan (2005)
I was cheesed that the inside of the book jacket gives away pretty much the entire plot of the book. Don't read that, okay? I'll try to give you a summary that leaves you with some suspense.
In the beginning, we have a pregnant woman lying in bed, waiting for her husband to come home. Instead, she gets a phone call: he's been involved in a crime, and he's in jail. I WILL tell you that he loses his trial and ends up staying in jail, because that's the point of the book: how his wife lives while he's in jail. But here's what I'm NOT going to tell you: How long he ends up staying in jail. Whether he wins any appeals. Whether his wife sticks by him. It made me crabby indeed to be reading along, get to a suspenseful part, and know exactly how it was going to turn out.
The book left me with a low, smudgy feeling. I thought it was well-written (I particularly admire a man who can write from a woman's point of view without making her think about shoes and chocolate all the time) and on an intriguing subject, but the subject itself is sad and dismal, so you shouldn't expect to feel all upbeat afterward. On the other hand, the resolution is satisfying and realistic, and the "life is short and people do stupid things" feeling is counteracted by the chin-of-dignity "you do what you can with what you get" feeling.
Missing Mom, by Joyce Carol Oates (2005)
When Nikki is in her early 30s, treating her mother with that special early-30s blend of love and dismissive exasperation, her mother dies. This book is about Nikki dealing with that unexpected death, but also about her memories of her mother and how those match up with what other people tell her about her mother's life. It's "How well do we ever really know another person?" combined with "It's so hard to appreciate what you have until you lose it," with a teeny touch of "Make sure you say 'I love you' whenever you say good-bye, in case you never see that person again."
Nikki is a dull person. She thinks of almost nothing exept her thin legs and her pale feet and her pretty shoes, and whether men are looking at her, and whether other women are too fat and/or jealous of her. The tragedy is supposed to deepen her and give her perspective, and it does a little, but I didn't care. I felt like her grief was (and I hesitate to say something so cold, but this is a fictional character we're talking about) attention-seeking. "Look at me, so beautiful and pale, grieving so hard. Poor me, losing my mother, look at how sad I am, and how lovely in my sadness." She was written as such a shallow person, it diminished the sadness of what happened to her. When her attractive desolation resulted in a new boyfriend to help her through her loss via a little reclined therapy, I was not surprised.
Nikki's older sister Clare is one-dimensional and consistently irrational, and it doesn't ring true. It's the way a character is sometimes written when an author has a grudge against someone and wants to make them look bad in a fictional setting. She's just there to attack Nikki and raise the reader's adrenaline.
The mother is a more pleasing blend. I recognized her cheery, dim-seeming, fluttery self, and I continued to feel like she made sense even when more of her inner life was revealed. The surprises were well-spaced to keep interest up.
I liked the book, I liked it a great deal, but I was also frequently annoyed by it.