Someone Could Get Hurt
A Memoir of Twenty-First-Century Parenthood
-
-
4.3 • 7 Ratings
-
-
- $10.99
-
- $10.99
Publisher Description
A sharp, funny, and heartfelt memoir about fatherhood and the ups and downs of raising a family in modern America
No one writes about family quite like Drew Magary. The GQ correspondent and Deadspin columnist’s stories about trying to raise a family have attracted millions of readers online. And now he’s finally bringing that unique voice to a memoir. In Someone Could Get Hurt, he reflects on his own parenting experiences to explore the anxiety, rationalizations, compromises, and overpowering love that come with raising children in contemporary America.
In brutally honest and funny stories, Magary reveals how American mothers and fathers cope with being in over their heads (getting drunk while trick-or-treating, watching helplessly as a child defiantly pees in a hotel pool, engaging in role-play with a princess-crazed daughter), and how stepping back can sometimes make all the difference (talking a toddler down from the third story of a netted-in playhouse, allowing children to make little mistakes in the kitchen to keep them from making the bigger ones in life). It’s a celebration of all the surprises—joyful and otherwise—that come with being part of a real family.
In the wake of recent bestsellers that expose how every other culture raises their children better, Someone Could Get Hurt offers a hilarious and heartfelt defense of American child rearing with a glimpse into the genuine love and compassion that accompany the missteps and flawed logic. It’s the story of head lice, almost-dirty words, and flat head syndrome, and a man trying to commit the ultimate act of selflessness in a selfish world.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Two parents squirm their way into contemporary American adulthood in this hilarious and heartfelt account. Deadspin and GQ columnist Magary (The Postmortal) writes with his usual panache and en-dearing vulgarity on a variety of stories about his nuclear family, but never shies away from a tender moment. Whether he is correcting his children's pizza-making abilities or teaching them the sheer joys of "petty vandalism", Magary and his wife puzzle out the complexities and nuances of parenthood. The volume is bookended by the tale of the youngest son who requires "disemboweling" due to a rare condition and the fragility and beauty of life is underscored by the honest and endearing anec-dotes throughout. Realizing that "baby helmets are a rotten lie" even after cracking his daughter's head against a doorframe in a daycare center, Magary gets to the story's core: what is required of these young parents is not an ultra-conservative, over-protective approach, or even one that allows kids to "do as many things on their own as humanly possible." The crux of their care-giving is altruism and providing genuine love, even if that care comes from an individual dressed as "a slow guy", drinking while trick-or-treating with his children: vulgar parenting at its best.
