Letters From Nin: Wisdom, Advice, and Encouragement for a First-Time Mother

Rating:
Summary: What every parent needs.
Review: Eleanor Weisberger's book is both a novel and a source of understanding parenthood and children. It is also a great read. Unlike most books about parents and children, this is based on what it feels like to be a parent and what it is like to be a child. I think new parents can become overwhelmed with information on one hand, and a feeling that they don't know what they are doing or should be doing on the other. Weisberger's book supports parents finding their own way at the same time that it offers insight into the processes of parenthood and childhood. That it is a novel makes it fun and accessible. I highly recommend it to new parents and any parents. (I think it is a valuable book for grandparents, as well).

Rating:
Summary: A great read and a great help--
Review: Letters from Nin is a juicy exchange between a young woman and her surrogate mother, about love, loss, family secrets, and the gossipy goings-on in a midwestern town. It's a delightful novel, but also a wonderful how-to book: Nin is trying to raise adorable Max, her first baby, and Kathe, the grandmother-substitute (and child therapist) comes up with all sorts of useful advice as Max grows out of infancy into toddlerdom and beyond. There's also another sort of how-to in the book as Nin, an artist, grapples with a central feminist issue, the struggle to combine motherhood and career. Kathe has her own surprising midlife developments to keep up with, trying to find love again after the loss of her beloved husband. This book gets at all sorts of things about a woman's life in an engaging lively manner. It's a great read and a great help, especially to anyone trying to figure out how to be a parent. There's humor and pathos here, and also wisdom. I loved it.