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Summary: A mothers beautiful moments
Review: "Guarding The Moon" did not surprise me in its beautiful lyrical content which is not unlike that of Block's previous novels. However, this book does take on a different note and feeling to it because it is non-ficiton. Block writes about her babies first year, including the joy of giving birth as well as the changes and adaptions that take place within herself, her family, and of course her baby. More then anything this book is the authors self-song of praise to the birth and life of her daughter. Having a first child makes a woman feel things and think things she hadn't imagined she'd feel or think and Block captures this rather accurately in a series of moments centering around the impact of her baby on her life. While Block explains the hardship that can come with having a new baby, she continuously emphasizes the joy and beauty of having a new spririt in her life.
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Summary: a great book by a clearly loving mother...
Review: 'Guarding the Moon' is a wonderful book about how joyous and enrapturing motherhood and babies are. Those who found this book "hilarious" or "terrible" apparently don't understand the obsession a woman can have with loving her child, when she has desired one for a long time. If you're looking for a book with nothing but cutsie anecdotes about stinky diapers and complaints about waking up in the middle of the night with a child, then you shouldn't read this book.
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Summary: Awesome as usual :)
Review: At first when I heard about this book, I didn't think it'd be as good as her others because it wasn't fiction, but being that Francesca Lia Block is my favorite author, I bought it anyway. I read the whole thing last night, and I don't have any problem admitting that I was completely wrong about my first assumption. This book is her best yet. It's so touching the way she talks about her daughter and her new life as a mother. It's deffinately a book you want to own a copy of.
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Summary: inspiring!
Review: Come with Francesca Lia Block as she embarks upon her first year as a mother, told with the raw awe-inspired language of a new parent in her GUARDING THE MOON.Lyrical, like a lullaby, this author's astonishment & joy of at last giving birth to a living child, & all the wonder that first year unfolds. Beautifully expressed. A delight!
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Summary: Too Moon-eyed for Me
Review: I read this book on the basis of the rave reviews here. Frankly, I was disappointed. I found it tediously self-indulgent and self-absorbed. She goes on and on and ON about how enraptured she is with her bambina, and yet every now again she lets slip something like how "they lost their regular sitter" when the baby was nine months old. A sitter! Yet she has said over and over how incredibly attached and preoccupied whe is with this infant! In that way she reminds me of the aunt in Proust's Swann's Way who claimed she never ever slept and yet would sometimes forget and say something about waking up or nodding off, or of a dream she had had.
Block is so totally focused on her feelings and her body that in some ways the baby is almost incidental to the story.
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Summary: wonderful, warm, enchanting book -- mothers will love it
Review: I was astonished at some of the vicious reviews of this book -- I found it wonderful and charming and heartwarming. As a mother, I identified with a great deal in this book. She tells the truth about the way your body and emotions change during pregnancy and nursing -- and that's not self-indulgence, that's sharing your feelings and giving other women a chance to say, "yes, that's how I felt, too!" She obviously adores her baby and is a wonderful mother. I loved all the nicknames for her baby, and her obvious pride in her enchanting little girl. Highly recommended for any mother.
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Summary: Leapin' Lizards- FLB Rocks
Review: If you're familiar with FLB's books and her writing style, you will thoroughly enjoy this book. I enjoyed her frank honesty about the way some new mothers can obsess about all the important and seemingly unimportant things about their babies. This book does a great job of expressing her growing into her own skin as a new mama.
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Summary: This book is absolutely terrible...
Review: It is rare that I would say this about a book, but 'Guarding the Moon' is something that I would have been a better person without reading. I like Lia Block's work, in small doses. 'Dangerous Angels' is a wonderful and divinely written young adult series, if not somewhat repetitive. More recently, 'Echo' was beautifully written, if not even more of the same thing. But this is absolutely terrible. I mean every word of that. The names she calls her child are absolutely cringe-worthy, and come off as pathetic and repetitive rather than sweet. She is
utterly self obsessed, has a fascination with her own phobias, weight, apple sweetened food and self esteem (and thinks that her readers do too.) The way she smothers her child is unhealthy, and to be honest, I walked away from the work wondering if she was psychologically imbalanced. The writing is undoubtedly lyrical and lovely, if not a little repetitive as many of her works are. However, I will perhaps never read a Lia Block book again knowing how overbearing and annoying her personality really is. I certainly do not recommend this book, and I believe it is possibly the worst possible way to introduce yourself to her writing.
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Summary: good book--for some good laughs
Review: This is the most self-indulgent piece of you-know-what I've ever read in my life. I got this book for a present, and I ended up turning to random pages and reading out loud random passages to friends so that we could laugh at the ridiculousness of it all. I'm a first-time mother, and I'm appalled that anyone would think that I could relate to this woman's awful narrative. It's like she just decided to publish her personal journal, thinking that people would enjoy reading it. And I guess some have, but it just wasn't for me!
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Summary: This Touching Memoir is the Perfect Gift for Mother's Day!
Review: With only a quick glance at the title, GUARDING THE MOON: A Mother's First Year, it is easy to imagine Francesca Lia Block's latest book as a guide for parents of newborns. But inside the cover is instead a beautiful, poetic and often brutally honest memoir of a first time mother's love for her baby and a record of her journey to self-love and emotional fulfillment. GUARDING THE MOON is a chronicle of Block's first year of motherhood: her joys, fears, anxieties and discoveries. Beginning at the moment she gives birth --- when she welcomes her daughter into the world --- and ending with the baby's first birthday, this slender volume is intimate and powerful. Block always wanted children, but barriers seemed to meet her at every turn. When she brings her healthy baby to term, after previously miscarrying, the responsibility she feels for her daughter (both physical and emotional) is overwhelming and awesome --- as overwhelming and awesome as if she had been chosen to guard the moon. While, for the most part, the book is about one woman's emotional, physical and spiritual reaction to becoming a mother, it is also about community and family. Block is supported in her first year as a mother by her loving husband and mother, surrounded by friends and adored by her two dogs. All of them contribute to her experience and story. Still, at the center of this literary celebration are Block and her daughter, also affectionately known as Babela, Kewpie, Moon Girl and Girly-Swirl, to mention just a few pet names. In the beginning, they are dependant on each other as frame of reference; the mother is the baby's world, the baby is the mother's moon. But, over the course of the year, they both begin to expand their universe. The baby faces new challenges and the mother begins to explore new personal possibilities and even imagines more babies. Each grows stronger and wiser. GUARDING THE MOON is really about creation and transformation --- the creation of one life and the transformation of another. Block shares much of her own troubled emotional past, her feelings of self-doubt and eating disorder. Becoming a mother does not erase or change the things that made her sad in the past, but it does give her a new and healthier perspective. Her body, once a vessel of pain and self-scorn, is now a giver and sustainer of life, loved unconditionally by her daughter. Just in time for Mother's Day, Block's book is a perfect gift. And, while it does discuss the mundane details that are included in most parenting books, such as diapers, lack of sleep and baby food, it also discusses family dynamics, marital intimacy, unexpected pleasures and pains of motherhood --- all written like a love letter, reading like a poem. GUARDING THE MOON is incredibly intimate and intensely spiritual. It is a unique contribution to parenting books and an important one. Block does not speak for all new mothers but shares her story in such a moving way that makes it highly readable and recommendable. --- Reviewed by Sarah Egelman
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