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Bookish
For Thanksgiving, my father gave me a copy of The Bad Mother's Handbook. I admit to lifting an eyebrow because he so rarely gives me new fiction that doesn't fall into one of two categories: mystery or science fiction*. The Bad Mother's Handbook belongs to a chick lit spin-off category: tales of the hapless maternal. Set in Northern England, there is not a high heeled shoe or girly cocktail in sight; it is all embarrassing encounters baddish food, unfortunate but not disastrous decisions and mostly feckless men.
The Bad Mother's Handbook was originally published in the UK, no surprise given its setting, where it was a big hit and made quite a star out of its author, Kate Long, who was a schoolteacher and mother in Shropshire who wrote in her spare time. The book, which is available here, didn't blast off in the United States, which makes me wonder where my father found it.
He is not a man who is above finding books amusing strictly on the basis of their titles or covers, so I'm not surprised that he got it for me, but what I can't figure at all is how he knew about it in the first place. The copy I have here (and yes, I did read it) is one he clearly purchased from an online used book dealer, since it is a Canadian hardcover edition. This means he must have known about it to order it, and while I have searched mightily in all the places he usually finds books that aren't really his thing, I am still in the dark. Why does it matter? Why don't I just ask him? It matters because this is the way my father and I express ourselves with each other and to discover what he's thinking, I tend to play detective.
This was one of the strange side effects of Felix. Naturally, there was a good chance having a child would bring me closer to my family, but one never really knows what will happen. On the one hand, I have gotten rather used to playing backup for my kid. My mother frequently asks: "How's my boy?" before anything and tends to burst into loud chatter with him even though he can't manage to hold the telephone to his ear. On the other, my father now calls from time to time to chat, which is something he almost never did pre-kid.
So I can't ignore the gesture that is the book, even though the text has nothing to do with me in any literal sense and it doesn't tend to be the kind of thing I read. It is significant. It is as significant as the fact that I had to shout at my father, who was loitering in the hall refusing to remove his parka, from my wobbly position astride the hospital bed, IV pole in hand to get him to come into the room the morning after Felix was born. When I asked my brother what he thought was up, he said: "The dad was probably trying to avoid anything that might encourage an expression of something like emotion." I not only agreed with him but felt that his reticence was all for the best. My father likes to keep things academic.
I choose to see this present as a gesture of interest from my father who I think does understand, though probably in an impractical way, that having a baby has its vicissitudes. I have read the book and like to think he is giving me a vote of confidence, because the alternative interpretation, given the story, is that he is thanking me for not getting knocked-up in high school and dropping out. Having said that, I do recall one evening in the middle of high school when I called home to let my parents know I would be late and the only reply was: "Just don't come home pregnant." But I really think in this case I should accentuate the positive.
Has anyone read The Bad Mother's Handbook? If so, what say?
*We have a thing going, my father and I, where we each try to find genre books the other hasn't heard of. I am rather proud about being way ahead of him. I was the first to read the Jack Reacher novels, the fabulous Altered Carbon and everything else by Richard K. Morgan and Jasper Fforde.
posted by Elise at 5:33 PM
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9/05/2006 12:57 AM
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