Dallas Louis

Reading another mother's stories about raising her kids can always evoke a laugh, a "thank God I'm not the only person that happened to" or a "thank God that never happened to me." Dallas Louis's book Why Some Animals Eat Their Young brought out all these responses. I was turned off, however, by the undertone in her writing that if you as a parent don't raise your kids as she did, there is something wrong with you or there will be something wrong with them. No parent should feel bad about working outside the home, for example, no matter why they choose to do so.… (plus d'informations)

I'm still puzzling over this book a bit - it doesn't begin as an advice book, but it sure ends as one, so it also isn't simply a biography. It is not an essay collection, either - no one chapter can be read on its own as it would be completely context-less, and yet there also isn't a major theme to the book as a whole (except "motherhood") and it isn't told chronologically as far as I could tell. Each chapter is also only loosely held together so that the chapter breaks sometimes seem arbitrary, or based on chapter length rather than chapter subject.

The book doesn't read as being about the universal motherhood experience because it is the story of a fairly privileged, rich, Christian, American Southerner white woman's story. And yet the final two chapters seem to believe that it IS imparting universal wisdom. So while I enjoyed much of the first part of the book (the author is pretty funny and the writing was sometimes repetitive but never boring), the last two or three chapters felt very preachy and left a bad taste in my mouth.

I was prepared to really enjoy this book, but it ended up being not my cup of tea.… (plus d'informations)