Mother on Fire: A True Motherf%#$@ Story about Parenting!

This book is a truly hysterical study of the life of any parent trying to decide where to send their kids to school. The author brings poignant humor to experiences that any parent will relate to. Thinking of sending your preschooler to private school? Then you will have to read this book. Don't be put off by the title -- it is truly worth reading.

Do not let the humor mask the importance of what Sandra Tsing Loh is saying here. There is a real distortion of reality developing on the part of many middle and upper class parents these days. She addresses this both from the inside and the outside arriving at a position that seems not that unusual but is indeed important for modern parents. At a seminar for some high powered young people in NYC, the presenter maintained that the qualities that got them where they may not be available to their children because of the decisions they, their cohort, make. When asked how many went to public schools, most raised their hands. When asked how many send their children to public schools, none raised their hands. "That's why your grandkids will not still have what you accumulate in your lives." he said. Maybe current economic times will change the trend. If so, this book is a pretty hopeful way to look at school for your kids. And it's so much more funny than reading Jonathan Kozol, great as he is.

The author is VERY funny and right on target when taking apart LAUSD and the LA scene which is extremely plastic and power focussed. Sandra not only thinks she has to solve her family's problems but lies awake at night trying to solve the whole world's problems while her husband, who grew up in So. Dakota peacefully sleeps. That is the angst one can have after growing up in Malibu and then living in Van Nuys. It is a laugh out loud book that needs to be savored in small doses because Sandra has so much to say that is thought provoking, especially about her generation's overly involved "parenting." That is my opinion as a person who brought up her children in the 70's when we stressed independence and self-reliance with lots of love. Actually, I was doing that while living across the street from Sandra and her family in Malibu. Buy the book, you will love reading it!

The author has taken her comedy routine on motherhood and fleshed it out into a book length memoir (a la Lily Tomlin). Her humorous obserations on the desire to be the perfect parent for fear of failing her infants forever is so American, for those parents who can afford $20,000+ for kindergarten. She fearlessly exposes her neurotic tendencies upon the reader and one wonders how her children will make out when they are teenagers. The book flows in a stream of consciousness conversational style that the reader needs to buy into or the reader will be annoyed. Overall "Mother on Fire" is a funny book.

Once again, Sandra Tsing Loh has massaged her very specific life into themes that touch the heart, providing plenty of laughs but also a lot to think about. With witty side trips, the author takes us on an invigorating journey from the sweet exhaustion of keeping up with small children through the frantic exhaustion of trying to find a decent school, and ends up with a new sense of purpose and community. Buy it; read it aloud if you can stop laughing; buy more for your friends! Favorite theme: "It seems there's no rite of female passage that can't be marked, in some vague way, by a little hay-strewn basket of bath items. As if to say 'Happy Graduation! Have a bath.' 'So you're thirty-seven! Have a bath.' 'Wishing you a fabulous divorce, and menopause! Rock on, sister, and ... try a bath.'" Watch how deftly this becomes a manifesto against Women as Mere Consumers.