Book Review: Bad Mother

Profoundly disturbing yet horribly addictive

I've heard a myriad of ramblings lately about Ayelet Waldman's latest novel, Bad Mother. From most things I've read, she came across as a woman I could really connect with. A mother, a wife, a career woman who is passionate about not only writing, but also for interests beyond her children. Plus, she's married to award winning author, Michael Chabon.

Since I'm on my own quest to find "balance" - I had to learn more about this person; this book couched to be so different than the myriad of other "good mommy" books out there...

On a frivolous whim, I decided to set aside the Skaggs-Ellek pact of not buying a full price hardback because I just could not wait until her book came out in paperback. So I spent the extra money hoping the enlightenment factor should well make up for the $26 I shelled out. I could not wait to dive into it.

But before I was even six paragraphs into the first chapter, I was shocked and angered by her overly-casual minimization of horrible child abuse as well as her immature name calling as seen below in two excerpts:

"Sometimes the crime is so lunatic that it approaches a kind of horrible grandeur, like that of Wendy Cook, a prostitute in Saratoga Springs who snorted cocaine off her baby's stomach while she was breast-feeding. (And here I've always been proud of being able to nurse and read at the same time!)"

"Not long ago, the dingbat pop starlet Britney Spears was hoisted up as the latest agent of villainy."

First off, how could anyone (especially a Mom of four) make light of a mother doing drugs off their baby's belly? That is so sad and her remark following it - plainly insensitive in my eyes.

Secondly, I admit to being a neophyte on the parenting front, but one of my first steadfast rules will be "no name calling". Think back to those school yard days and the trauma it caused so many precious, budding personalities. Obviously, Ayelet does not feel that way and the fact that her children will read this makes me think that because Mama "name calls", they can too. Sad. Sad. Sad.

Yet, I kept reading...

Chapter 11, Rocketship, was probably one of the most shocking, sad, and angering chapters I have ever read about anything in my life. Her actions in this chapter were criminal in my mind yet it was amazing how easily she plucked me from my bedside page turner into her cavernous world of sadness - there could have been an earthquake going on and I was so engrossed - I would not have noticed.

Still, the pages were were turned until I finished.

Even though she is a phenomenal and, in her words, honest writer, and even though I could not stop reading the book despite my growing dislike for her candid actions and thoughts throughout the novel - there wer tender moments of enlightenment that will reverberate with every mother.
For my own philosophical and ethical reasons, this book gets a thumbs down, though I challenge anyone to try to start reading it without finishing it.

(If anyone wants to borrow it - let me know.)