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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: $10.00
You Save: $13.00 (57%)
New (39) Used (14) from $10.00
Avg. Customer Rating:  13 reviews
Sales Rank: 13072
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
ASIN: 0609608134
Publication Date: August 12, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: New in New jacket 8vo-over 7 3/4"'"-9 3/4"'" tall. BRAND NEW, NOT A REMAINDER. 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 t
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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...
 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.
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!
 Amusing August 25, 2008
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
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.
Side-splitting August 30, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
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!
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.
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