Newman, Judith. You Make Me Feel Like an Unnatural Woman: Diary of a New (Older) Mother. New York: Miramax Books, 2004.
There are three reoccurring themes in You Make Me Feel Like an Unnatural Woman. Judith likes to portray herself as an over-forty, unhappily married, yet wealthy woman with a moral on parenting: be careful what you wish for. While she is extremely funny about it, she is constantly criticizing her husband, John, for not being around more to help with twins, born after seven years and & $70,000 worth of IVF procedures. As an over-sixty man living at a different address, what exactly did she expect? He’s not about to change. Judith handles the trials and tribulations of raising twins with more aplomb and name dropping than any new mom I know. Having a $250 a day nanny certainly helps!
Favorite funny lines, “If he’s like most men I’ve known he’ll spend the rest of his life thinking of his dick as a masterpiece anyway. “Yes, honey, that’s art,” I said” (p 215).
My only complaint? Newman tries so freakin’ hard to be funny all the time that the tenderness of what she has (supposedly) longed for for so long gets lost. There were glimpses of caring at times, like, when she describes thinking her babies are beautiful. But, on the whole, it was if Newman was constantly “on” all the time. I never really thought I saw the real mother because she was veiled behind a thousand jokes.
BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust in the chapter called, “Nagging Mothers, Crying children” (p 172). Appropriate for Mother’s Day, don’t you think?
~*LunaSea*~ 