Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #802193 in Books
• Published on: 2005-03-08
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 272 pages

Customer Reviews

Sheer loveliness
I didn't keep a diary when my son was born, and I regret that. But this fabulous book brought it all back.

Mums, old & new - this is a must-read book.

I laughed out loud a thousand times, and often had to wait for my eyes to clear of tears before I could read on.

Anne, you're an AMAZING author. I've also read "Bird by Bird" and loved that too.

Hmmmm
This was an alternately interesting and irritating read. Ann Lamott is a sensitive and honest chronicler of her own life, and her situation as a single, unorthodox type of woman was interesting. Her baby is much like most other babies - he does all the usual excretory activities, he screams like crazy and sometimes she loves him more than she can bear and other times, she cannot work out what to do with him. But I'm afraid her encounters with her therapist just made me shake my head and wonder why some people have to over-analyse the stuff that happens not just to them but to all of us.

God features a good deal in this book as Ann Lamott is a committed liberal Christian, and a politicised woman - what I found heartbreaking was that she wrote Operating Instructions at the time of Bush I's Desert Storm fiasco - it seems that in the intervening 15 years, little has changed.

That said, it is an interesting take on the early stages of motherhood.