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Book Review of Abbott Awaits: A Novel (Yellow Shoe Fiction)

Abbott Awaits: A Novel (Yellow Shoe Fiction)
Leigh avatar reviewed on + 378 more book reviews


Take warning if you're a neurotic parent; this will disturb you, as it hones in on your fears and worries and parental ennui. I felt at one point as if the author had sliced my brain open and peered in at what I was thinking while watching an old video of one of my kids. Chilling.

This is a fair book and I think it best summed up in a paraphrase: I wouldn't change a thing about my life, but I hate it.

Adjusting to life with a child is difficult, challenging, exhausting, frustrating, maddening, etc. That's because you have a new, different life and it involves making yourself "play blocks" or feign excited interest for hours while your child shows you he or she can jump on one foot. Although your body is occupied, your mind is not. And that's prime nesting area for neuroses to grow.

The title, I felt, couldn't have been more appropriate. As parents, we're waiting. We're waiting for life to change, to feel different, for our freedom to be returned. We hate being in this state. But we'd never change it. But we hate it.

So honest and readable that although it pained me to read some of it, I give it a full 4 1/2 stars.