Letters to My Daughters - Hardcover

Matalin, Mary

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0743256085 ISBN 13: 9780743256087

Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 2004

Synopsis

In Letters to My Daughters, famed political consultant and TV personality Mary Matalin shares the moral, ethical, and occasionally comic life lessons gleaned from her mother's experiences and her own. These intimate, personal letters range from the spiritual to the practical, from giving life to accepting death, from civic to personal responsibility, from looking and feeling good to dealing with those pesky boys, and more.

Here's a sampling of the mother wisdom found in these pages:

Crying is not a weakness; it's cathartic and cleansing. People who live life with the fullest commitment tend to cry a lot. It's a healthy expression of deep emotions. I don't like or trust people who don't or can't cry.

When I tell you I understand what you're going through, it's not just because I remember what it felt like to be a teenage girl whose body is being hijacked by hormones against her will. It's because I'm a fifty-something whose body is being hijacked by hormones against her will at this very moment. And if you don't believe me, just ask your father.

I believe in my heart of hearts that a life without faith is unanchored and unfulfilling. Without it, you're just wandering in the desert. You experience deeply that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts -- and the singing is damn good.

Ma had a complex philosophy of sex, which I heard almost every day from age ten. "Boys would screw a snake if it would lay still long enough." Let's flash forward forty years and allow your mother to give you a twenty-first-century take on boys and S-E-X: "Boys would screw a snake if it would lay still long enough."...And the men in Washington think that's a compliment.

A deep sense of loyalty can help you overcome almost any bump in the road. The disloyal may advantage themselves in some work situations, but their gains will be temporary, fleeting. They will fail their institutions, their colleagues, and worst of all, themselves.

Filled with warmth, common sense, a belief in the values that keep families strong, and her trademark sense of humor, Mary Matalin's letters will inspire, guide, entertain, and inform. They're the perfect companion for any mother looking for a smart, sensible fellow traveler on the road to raising good daughters.

About this title

Review:

Mary Matalin, the media savvy Republican strategist for two Bushes and one Cheney, switches to mama bear mode in a series of letters intended as a legacy for her two preteen daughters. Her advice reflects on formative experiences--losing her mother at age 26, working in the White House, marrying a soul mate from another political planet (high profile Democrat James Carville), and surviving Hurricane Isabel. Each letter's theme is reflected in her greeting. For example, "Dear hormone handmaidens" gives equal time to menses and menopause," Dear lovelies" focuses on how not to become a dieter or fashion victim and "Dear unfortunate carriers of the Matalin DNA," acknowledges anxiety (hers and theirs). Matalin is at her best when translating family or political lessons in her own terms including her mother's quiet faith, her brother Stevie's gallant response to his bicycle accident and the climate of loyalty in Bush's White House. Her love for her daughters is wonderfully ferocious and funny--full of mom sound bites. After promising not to spy or pry she warns: "But from a distance, I'll be keeping track of you like a rat on a cheeto."

Matalin's engaging and wise counsel alternates with advice flawed by her insistence on gender typecasting and the stale idea that "what defines us is ungettable by the other sex." This problem is magnified by the grating coarseness of her view of men. When Matalin tells her daughters, "Boys would screw a snake if it would lay still long enough," readers may wonder whether she intended these letters as keepsake for her daughters--or as a best seller for a wider audience. --Barbara Mackoff

About the Author:

Mary Matalin served as assistant to President George W. Bush and counselor to Vice President Dick Cheney. She hosted CNN's Crossfire, was founding cohost of Equal Time, and recently starred in Steven Soderbergh and George Clooney's K Street. She also co-authored with her husband, James Carville, the bestselling All's Fair: Love, War, and Running for President. She and Carville reside in Virginia with their daughters, Matalin "Matty" Carville and Emerson Normand Carville, as well as three dogs, four cats, two hamsters, and two turtles (two of which coincidentally are ingredients in her husband's gumbo). At PTA meetings, she is known to remind people that she is an expert on children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, having married one in 1993.

About this edition

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0743256085
• ISBN 13: 9780743256087
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 272