Operating Instructions : A Journal of My Son's First Year

The author of Rose, Hard Laughter and two other novels chronicles her son's growth, discussing her fears and worries, her deepening faith, and the support of her eccentric circle of friends. 10,000 first printing.

Magazine columnist and novelist Lamott ( All New People ) captures both the poignancy and comedy of her first year as a single mother in this wonderfully candid diary. Her quirky humor steadily draws the reader into her unconventional world as she describes her friends and neighbors in northern California, her participation in a local church, her experiences as a recovering alcoholic and--best of all--her infant son, Sam, born in 1989. She covers maternal emotions from rapturous bliss to bare fury ("In the middle of the colic death marches, I end up looking at the baby with those hooded eyes that were in the old ads for The Boston Strangler "). Throughout, she airs her strong political and religious beliefs. And when her best friend, Pammy, is diagnosed with terminal cancer, Lamott conveys her anguish with the same depth of feeling and sense of the absurd that characterize her observations about her son, God, recovery, writing, Republicans, men and life as usual. Even non-parents will enjoy this glowing work.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Novelist Lamott (All New People, 1989, etc.) nimbly plunders stores of self-mockery in her role as a new mother and single parent. Born August 29, 1989, baby Sam is ``like moonlight,'' and wastes no time in stealing his mother's heart with his beauty and his thin, ``Christlike'' feet. He and Lamott have thoroughly bonded by the time he turns into a colicky, crying, angry evening storm. Here, in regular journal entries, the author follows Sam's progress, fears for her milk supply, hates her thighs--which slap together with postpartum sag--and worries that she may be headed for collapse. She decides, in short, to give him back--to wherever he came from. He may be a baby, but he's scum. Still, Sam remains an endearing and veritable presence in these pages, but he's continuously upstaged by Lamott's wry efforts to get a grip on her ever-wavering self-esteem and her unwillingness to engage in any truth-varnishing when it comes to the ever-so-bumpy road of mothering. Through it all, Lamott's surrounded by a crazy quilt of loving folk who make the latter-day nuclear family seem quaint. Even so, the author occasionally laments that pivotal problem of single parenthood: that if she always knows where the baby is, it's because she's usually the only one around to hold him. Throughout, Lamott provides a sense of ordinary domesticity, interrupted and then rendered extraordinary by moments of peripatetic musings. One need not be a new parent to appreciate Lamott's glib and gritty good humor in the face of annihilating weariness. She'll nourish fans with her entries, and give birth to new ones as well. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

This account is much more than a parent's chronicle of her initiation into parenting. Lamott, a 35-year-old novelist (e.g., All the Right People , LJ 8/89), recovering alcoholic, and single parent, here shares her humor, faith, friendships, and irreverence. Her descriptions alternate between joy and despair as she tells of nursing her young son and watching him grow. Lamott also describes what it means to be a single parent, the sobering reality of being alone with financial responsibilities, and the trials of life as an older parent. Intertwined with the parenting account is a parallel story of the serious illness and impending death of the author's best friend. Operating Instructions is enhanced by Lamott's colorful and expressive language, her philosophical reflections, and her descriptions of many eccentric friends. Although this book may not appeal to all readers, those who enjoy diaries and first-person narratives will savor it. For most collections.
- Kay Brodie, Chesapeake Coll., Wye Mills, Md.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.