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Mother on Fire: A True Motherf%#$@ Story About Parenting! | 
 enlarge | Author: Sandra Tsing Loh
Publisher: Crown
Category: Book
List Price: $23.00
Buy New: $9.49
You Save: $13.51 (59%)
New (40) Used (14) from $9.49
Avg. Customer Rating:  13 reviews
Sales Rank: 20870
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 320
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.3
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.4
ISBN: 0609608134
Dewey Decimal Number: 818.6
EAN: 9780609608135
Publication Date: August 12, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
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. Yea, we can hold it together in our thirties, with a raft of hair products and semi-tall nonfat half-caf beverages and much brisk walking to a lot of interesting appointments. Come the forties, though, cracks begin to appear. One staggers suddenly along life’s path; 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 and self-deprecating voice to emerge from the “mommy war” debates. In Mother on Fire, she fires away with her trademark hilarious satire of societal and personal irks large and small, including limo liberals who preach the virtues of public school but send their children to fashionable private ones, the proliferation of costly skin-care products that just don’t cut it, society’s obsession with aromatherapy, her Chinese father’s disdain for her life as an artist, and $10 Target pants (“Are they running pants, exercise pants, pajama pants?”) that are the ubiquitous Mother of Small Children uniform.
Prompted by her own midlife crisis, Loh throws her frantic energy not into illicit affairs, shopping binges, or exotic trips, but into the harrowing heart of contemporary, dysfunctional L.A. life when she realizes that she can’t afford private school for her daughter, and her only alternative is her neighborhood’s public school, Guavatorina, where most of the kids speak Spanish and qualify for free lunches. In a theater-of-the-absurd-style odyssey, Mother on Fire documents Loh’s “year of living dangerously” among pompous school admissions officials, lactose-intolerant, Prius-driving parents, mafia dons of public radio, vindictive bosses, and old friends with new money as she first kisses ass—and then kicks it.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 8 more reviews...
 CRACKED ME UP! August 16, 2008
7 out of 7 found this review helpful
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!
Buy this for your women friends instead of more scented soap August 17, 2008
8 out of 9 found this review helpful
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.
Motherhood Revisited August 23, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
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.
Funny and oh so true September 15, 2008
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
Sandra- from a public educator of too many years-my review for this book is that it's the best one I read this summer! Take that, clive james!
A TERRIFIC READ September 26, 2008
This is a wonderful book.
I own what has become one of the largest private school advisory firms in the country and this is a must read for parents from every walk of life. I'm buying a ton of this book to hand out as holiday gifts. It's a NANNY DIARIES for real parents.
Amanda Uhry
Manhattan Private School Advisors
New York City
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