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Playing House: Notes of a Reluctant Mother
Author:
Slater, Lauren
Biographee:
Slater, Lauren
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Class:
Biography
Age: Adult
Language: English
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LC: PS3619.L
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ISBN-13: 9780807001738
LCCN: 2013013073
Imprint: Beacon Press
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Pub Date: 11/05/2013
Availability: Available
List: $24.95
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Hardcover
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Physical Description:
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xii, 191 pages ; 24 cm
H 9.36",
W 6.3",
D 0.94",
1 lbs.
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LC Series:
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Brodart Sources:
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Bibliographies:
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Awards:
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Library Journal Best Books
Library Journal Starred Reviews
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Starred Reviews:
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Library Journal
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TIPS Subjects:
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Literature, American
Family Life
Women's Studies
Biography, Individual
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BISAC Subjects: |
BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Memoirs
FAMILY & RELATIONSHIPS / General
LITERARY COLLECTIONS / Essays
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LC Subjects:
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Mothers, United States, Biography
Slater, Lauren, Family
Women authors, American, 20th century, Biography
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SEARS Subjects: |
American authors, Biography
Mothers, United States, Biography
Slater, Lauren, Family
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Reading Programs: |
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| Annotations |
| ONIX annotations | 01/10/2024 |
| Acclaimed author Lauren Slater ruminates on what it means to be family.
Lauren Slater's rocky childhood left her cold to the idea of ever creating a family of her own, but a husband, two dogs, two children, and three houses later, she came around to the challenges, trials, and unexpected rewards of playing house. In these autobiographical pieces, Slater presents snapshots of domestic life, populating them with the gritty details and jarring realities of sharing home, life, and body in the curious institution called "family." She asks difficult questions and probes unsettling truths about sex, love, and parenting. In these pages, Slater introduces us to her struggles with her mother, her determination to make a home of her own, her compromises in deciding to marry (her conflicts manifesting as an affair on the eve of her wedding), her initial struggle to connect with her newborn child, and the dilemmas of mothering with a mental illness. She writes openly about her decision to abort her second pregnancy and her later decision to have a second child after all. She tells us about the searing decision to have elective double mastectomy and how her love for her husband was magically rekindled after she saw him catch fire in a chemical accident.
It's not all mastectomies and chemical fires, though. Slater digs into the everyday challenges of family living, from buying a lemon of a car and fighting back menacing weeds to gaining weight and being jealous of the nanny. Beautifully written, often humorous, and always revealing, these stories scrutinize the complex questions surrounding family life, offering up sometimes uncomfortable truths. |
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| Starred Reviews: |
| Library Journal | 08/01/2013 |
| Psychologist and writer Slater (Lying: A Metaphorical Memoir) weaves together a series of essays demonstrating that even the unprepared and initially unwilling may create a family life that doesn't go up in flames (except when it does). Equipped with no role model and significant mental health issues, Slater proves that life is, in no bad way, what happens when you are making other plans. Her long trek across the territory from the boundaries of her own comfort to the land of society's idea of motherhood is the source of some beautiful writing. Slater talks about things as varied as the satisfactions of woodworking and what ensues when you comes upon your husband engulfed in flames. VERDICT Slater graciously acknowledges that many of these essays were written for "women's magazines," which allowed her to live aloud and encouraged address difficult truths over the course of many years. The essays skip from topic to topic, but Slater's gorgeous eloquence never fails. 208p. LJ Reviews Online Review. LIBRARY JOURNAL, c2013. |
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| Journal Reviews |
| Booklist | 09/01/2013 |
| Psychologist Slater has gained many fans over the years with her intensely personal writing and now rewards them with this extraordinary essay collection about the domestic perils she has navigated, from the time her chemist husband literally caught on fire and jolted them out of a marital malaise to her lifelong struggle with mental illness. Her sheer bravado and willingness to lay every aspect of her personal life bare are hallmarks of her writing style and are on full display in each of these pieces. A search for a lost libido, a depression-induced descent into hygiene lapses and self-described frumpiness, a gut-wrenching decision to abort a pregnancy her mental state cannot endure--it's all here, and the author's willingness to take readers into these darker places of her life and relationships is not only admirable but lends itself to surprisingly addictive reading. A brilliant example of the resonant power of women's writing, Slater's emotional revelations will strike chords in readers unable to turn away from these difficult but sincere domestic truths. Slater's candid collection has huge book-group appeal. Mondor, Colleen. 208p. AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION, c2013. |
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| Kirkus Reviews | 10/15/2013 |
| A psychologist and nonfiction writer's frank meditations on how she formed a family and learned to love the people in her life. Slater (The $60,000 Dog: My Life with Animals, 2012, etc.) explores how she "[came] to the task of mothering" after surviving a "brutal" childhood. Her early experiences, which included a move from her dysfunctional birth family into a foster home, shaped her into an adult for whom control, rather than personal relationships, was most important. "I wanted more than a man, a best friend, a child or talent, I wanted a home, she writes," since ownership itself represented something "magical." Despite a "brooding and acerbic and self-consumed" nature and tendencies toward obsessive-compulsive disorder and depression, Slater managed to find love, get married and have children. But she still struggled with a number of issues, including attachment. With candor and self-deprecating wit, she describes the difficulty she had bonding with her infant daughter and the lack of interest she had in sex. A driven career woman, Slater eventually grew to love domesticity. She even became an expert in carpentry, a craft that brought her closer to her husband. For all his liberality toward gender roles in the home, he could not understand that "the domestic arts [were] a combination of mindless tasks and mindful executions." Slater also discusses her fraught relationship with her own body. She talks openly about combating the frumpiness that emerged in the wake of depression as well as her elective double mastectomy surgery to eliminate the too-large breasts that also carried the genetic threat of cancer. At once revealing and disconcerting, Slater's work celebrates the endless, though not always easy, rebirths that are possible through family life. A fiercely, lyrically honest memoir. 208pg. KIRKUS MEDIA LLC, c2013. |
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| Publishers Weekly | 11/25/2013 |
| The latest from psychologist and prolific essayist Slater (The $60,000 Dog: My Life with Animals) is a slender, lyrically voiced collection of her essays, written over time, comprising personal experiences with sex, self-esteem, parenting, mental illness, and childhood family dysfunction. Slater's digressive style is one of her hallmarks, as is the confessional, glass-half-full deliverance of her travails and triumphs as a wife, mother, psychologist, foster child, and cancer survivor. Many of these vignettes are bold and entertaining; some of her indulgences, such as outing publicly her lack of interest in marital sex ("I have been gripped by sex the same as the trap grips the ferret's leg and he has to bite off his limb to set himself free. What kind of fun is this?") and the details of her affair while engaged to be married, teeter precariously between too much information and bad taste. Any shortcomings are assuaged by giving readers access to keen observations of nature and human nature, and her accumulated wisdom, which provide a compelling, highly relatable narrative. The more uplifting passages depict moments of newfound personal and spiritual enlightenment, such as when she discovered a relationship between mood and self-neglect, and that her depression lessened when her physical appearance improved. (Nov.). 208p. Web-Exclusive Review. PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, c2013. |
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