If It's Not One Thing, It's Your Mother
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- 9,99 €
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- 9,99 €
Publisher Description
A memoir of motherhood and marriage that will make you laugh and cry - and then laugh again
'This is the sort of book that made me want to be the person who wrote it. Pithy, painful and very, very funny' Emma Thompson
'[A] mix of comedy and emotion that makes up this warm and intimate memoir ... This is a funny, affectionate memoir about being an unconventional parent' Daily Mail
Julia Sweeney was nearing forty, and quite famous, when she got on a flight to China to turn her life upside down. She had a flourishing career as a comedienne and performer, ample friends and admirers, but what she didn't have was a child and, after a string of non-committal boyfriends, she decided to adopt alone.
Mulan was one-and-a-half years old when she met her new mother, and every bit as feisty as the Disney character (whom she was emphatically not named for). If It's Not One Thing, It's Your Mother is the story of this unexpected mother-daughter pair who eventually became – to Julia's astonishment and in a hilariously unconventional way – a mother-daughter-father trio.
From being mistaken for her daughter's grandmother to her tragically short-lived belief that knitting a man a sweater will make him commit to you, Julia's memoir is at once hilarious, poignant, provocative and wise. It is a story of adoption, Hollywood, dogs, death, marriage, Santa Claus, race and religion, the birds, the bees (and the frogs…) and everything else along the way.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Sweeney, former cast member of Saturday Night Live (1990-1994) and creator of the androgynous character "Pat", takes readers on an intimate and humorous journey through her satisfying and occasionally messy family life. Married and now living outside of Chicago, Sweeney depicts the tribulations of adopting a baby girl from China and her life as a single-mother. With timing true to her comedic roots, she meanders delightfully through past histories, recounting her years in Los Angeles, her twenty-five year high school reunion, and the assortment of men she dated. Sweeney tackles a myriad of touchy topics with candor and bigheartedness. Any subject is fair game. Whether describing the long search for the right nanny for her daughter, her intense dislike of big strollers which she describes as "super-wide, almost Hummer-like in their obnoxiousness, a veritable trailer for their precious cargo," or the death of her beloved brother, Sweeney plunges right in. "Okay. Let me stop this lightly comic, chatty memoir and brings things to a dead stop. Emphasis on dead. My brother Bill died yesterday." Sweeney's devilish sense of humor successfully makes the transition to the page, linking the scenes of her life as daughter, sister, wife, and mother into a delightful whole.