The Cursing Mommy's Book of Days
A Novel
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3.9 • 17 Ratings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Based on his widely read columns for The New Yorker, Ian Frazier's uproarious first novel, The Cursing Mommy's Book of Days, centers on a profoundly memorable character, sprung from an impressively fertile imagination. Structured as a daybook of sorts, the book follows the Cursing Mommy—beleaguered wife of Larry and mother of two boys, twelve and eight—as she tries (more or less) valiantly to offer tips on how to do various tasks around the home, only to end up on the ground, cursing, surrounded by broken glass. Her voice is somewhere between Phyllis Diller's and Sylvia Plath's: a hilariously desperate housewife with a taste for swearing and large glasses of red wine, who speaks to the frustrations of everyday life.
Frazier has demonstrated an astonishing ability to operate with ease in a variety of registers: from On the Rez, an investigation into the lives of modern day Oglala Sioux written with a mix of humor, compassion, and imagination, to Dating Your Mom, a sidesplitting collection of humorous essays that imagines, among other things, how and why you might begin a romance with your mother. Here, Frazier tackles another genre with his usual grace and aplomb, as well as an extra helping of his trademark wicked wit. The Cursing Mommy's failures and weaknesses are our own—and Frazier gives them a loving, satirical spin that is uniquely his own.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Bored and frustrated suburban housewife and mother Linda, aka the Cursing Mommy, curses every moment she's alive and has to put up with her life. Plagued with an unambitious and lazy husband who lives in his own world and doesn't help out in hers, she's also afflicted with an aging father with dementia who just won't and two sons whose own particular ways take too much time away from her book club and her drinking scotch. Using her day-book as an invitation into the story of her life and woes, Linda invites her dear readers to accompany her day-by-day through one year of her crazy, rotten, desperate life. Drawing on his New Yorker columns featuring the cursing mommy, essayist Frazier builds this ramshackle and rambling novel around this profane mother who appears to have watched one too many teenage gross-out movies and who copes with life with a salty tongue and a shallow mind. While Frazier's so-called novel tries valiantly to skewer the superficiality of suburban soccer moms with his satire, his main character's tiresome tirades quickly wears on the reader.
Customer Reviews
Good, but...
I really enjoyed the preview sample of this book. Who would laugh at a mom having to knock down a giant frozen penis (that was supposed to be a snowman) in their front yard? This gal! I laughed and laughed. I think more so because I am a mother of two boys and I could see myself having this same problem...and on some level, reacting the same way. But the rest of the read wasn't as laugh out loud funny. It's too bad because the writing is satire at it's best. I think I was prepared for more realism humor vs the over the top craziness that it was. Don't get me wrong, the main characters are pretty honest but what surrounds them is larger than life parody. It left me wanting to tone it down a notch or two to enjoy some ability to relate. It was like finding Stephen Colbert when I was looking for Jon Stewart. Regardless, this is the first Frazier book I've bought and I would buy another now I know what to expect.