First published 2009
Deborah Copaken Kogan tackles modern parenting while perpetually broke in New York City, one of the world's most expensive places to raise children. The acclaimed author of Shutterbabe chronicles eleven connected episodes from the trenches of family life with her husband and three kids. She shares a hospital room with a cursing teenage mother and her loud friends after a brutal delivery. When appendicitis strikes during the worst possible week, she crawls to her own emergency surgery while juggling a vacationing babysitter, kids home from school, a demanding New York Times editor, and family flu. She drives twelve hours alone with a shrieking toddler just to glimpse her oldest child in a summer camp play. Kogan writes with the sharp observational comedy of David Sedaris and Spalding Gray, turning everyday parenting disasters into laugh out loud situations. She never spares herself from scrutiny, remaining as accountable as anyone else in her stories. These war stories from the front lines prove that raising children tests every limit while delivering unexpected moments of clarity.
Genres: family, family-life, non-fiction, 21st-century
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: family-drama, memoir
Setting: New York City
Period: 21st-century
225 pages · Kindle Edition · Grand Central Publishing