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4 Burnside Child Care and Parenting- Single Parenting
1 Burnside Child Care and Parenting- Infancy and Toddlerhood


Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year

by Anne Lamott

Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year Cover

ISBN13: 9780449909287
ISBN10: 044990928x
Condition: Standard
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Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments:

"I woke up with a start at 4:00 one morning and realized that I was very, very pregnant." So begins novelist Aniie Lamott's journal of the birth of her son, Sam, and their first year together. She must face complicated circumstances of heroic proportions. A single mother who must support herself and her son entirely by her wit and craft, she is also a recovering alcoholic, clean and sober for more than three years. Newly and militantly on her own side, she remains dangerously close to memories of days when she "couldn't take decent care of cats."

Fortunately, Lamott is one of the world's funniest people. And she desperately needs her sense of humor as she chronicles her new life with Sam. Plagued by the normal worries of all first-time mothers, she adds her concern that she is "much too self-centered, cynical, and edgy to raise a baby." One false step will turn her sweet, big-eyed boy into an ax murderer. And no matter how well she handles things Sam will still have to get through the seventh grade. Even in exhaustion and despair, she is buoyed up by her deepening religious faith and her somewhat eccentric extended fimily, friends who offer her great love and loyalty and are much-needed replacements for Sam's absent father. But this year of new beginnings suddenly includes the beginning of an end. Lamott's best friend since childhood, her birth coach and a daily companion to her and Sam, is diagnosed as having terminal cancer. As Lamott copes with the vexations of single motherhood, she must also accept this unimaginable loss. Facing both joy and grief greater than any she has ever known, she must find within herself the capacity to continue. Her courageous commentary, narrating days barely balanced between angst and strength, fills this journal of a year when "sometimes it feels like God has reached down and touched me, blessed me a thousand times over, and sometimes it al] feels like a mean joke, like God's advisers are Muammar Qaddafi and Phyllis Schlafly."

Review:

"An enormous triumph . . . Charming . . . Powerful . . . A gracious book, with dozens of lovingly drawn characters and a deep, infectious religiosity throughout. It is also funny." San Francisco Chronicle

Review:

"Smart, funny and comforting . . . Lamott has a conversational style that perfectly conveys her friendly, self-deprecating humor." Los Angeles Times Book Review

Review:

"Magazine columnist and novelist Lamott captures both the poignancy and comedy of her first year as a single mother in this wonderfully candid diary." Publishers Weekly

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Average customer rating based on 1 comment:
kimyoshi, November 14, 2006 (view all comments by kimyoshi)
Absolutely hilarious. Lamott is so frightened, but within that fright her spirituality just shines. She goes through pretty much what other first time mothers go through, but her son has a nasty case of colic, and she is a single mom. For the three months that he suffers, she is in an agony of fear, anger, sympathy, and loneliness. Upon occasion, while Sam is having "one of his episodes," Lamott decides that "I am not speaking to him." She has become that horrid being who cries all the time and has six inch nipples. What a hoot!!!
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Product Details

ISBN:
9780449909287
Subtitle:
A Journal of My Son's First Year
Author:
Lamott, Anne
Author:
Lamott, Anne
Publisher:
Ballantine Books
Location:
New York :
Subject:
Fiction
Subject:
Women
Subject:
Parenting
Subject:
Infants & Toddlers - Infants
Subject:
Parenting - Single Parenting
Subject:
Parental Memoirs
Subject:
Single mothers
Subject:
Lamott, Anne
Subject:
Parenting - General
Copyright:
Edition Description:
1st Ballantine Books ed.
Publication Date:
April 1994
Binding:
Paperback
Language:
English
Illustrations:
Y
Pages:
272
Dimensions:
7.24x5.05x.62 in. .46 lbs.
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