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Book Review of Playing House

Playing House
Playing House
Author: Patricia Pearson
Genre: Literature & Fiction
Book Type: Paperback
reviewed on + 331 more book reviews


Having a baby gets the chick-lit treatment in this first novel about first-time motherhood. No glowing madonnas here. Frannie confirms her unexpected condition at the Gap when she throws up on a sweater display. Not trusting any of the doctors in her adopted city of New York, she flies home to Toronto. While trying to re-enter the U.S. she is informed that her visa has expired. Left jobless and homeless, Frannie camps out at her brother's posh mansion and contemplates how to tell Calvin, an experimental jazz musician on tour in Europe, about his impending fatherhood. During her major life crises, Frannie experiences all the minor travails associated with pregnancy--shopping for nursing bras, learning to operate a breast pump, and unhappily comparing herself with her fellow Lamaze classmates, all "paragons of Sears catalog motherhood." This clever and humorous look at pregnancy and motherhood will elicit laughs from readers with or without children.