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Product Description
Twenty years ago a woman named Erma Bombeck brought the suburban family out of the closetdust bunnies and all. Her honest, hilarious accounts of family life, where the grass is always greener over the septic tank,” became more than mere books; they became a philosophy. Ayun Halliday is a new generation’s urban Bombeck. Creator of the wildly popular parenting zine The East Village Inky, Halliday’s words and line drawings describe the quirks and everyday travails of a young urban family, warts and all. Honest in her parenting foibles and fixed in her opinions on public breast-feeding and the perfect Halloween costume, Halliday’s wry observations on daily life validate the complex, absurd wondrousness that is the life of the unpaid caregiver. Reflecting on her daughter’s third thumb, declawing the cat, and debating her son’s circumcision, she writes: My family has a highly complex relationship to amputation.” On appropriate knowledge for children: All Inky wants to talk about is the murder of John Lennon. I think it’s my fault.” On lice: Head lice were outed on the children’s program Arthur this year in an effort to de-stigmatize the problem. I guess I’m glad that lice have hit the mainstream, though what’s next for Arthur and his pals? Heroin addiction?” On family holidays: Danged if it isn’t trueyou really cannot recreate the Christmases of your childhood. I can’t even recreate the Christmases of my teens.” It is in the details that The Big Rumpus will delight. Halliday manages to capture a voice that so many of today’s parents hear in their own heads, in a way that is absolutely unique yet familiar. The Big Rumpus marks the debut of a major new talent who has formulated a whole new set of operating instructions” for today’s families.
Amazon.com Review
Of the many stay-at-home mommies who dream of writing the Great American Novel, few actually try; fewer still get published. Though not a novel, The Big Rumpus certainly is the Great American Tale of one woman's schlep through early motherhood--honest, hilarious, and irresistibly naughty. Ayun Halliday, a highly caffeinated and refreshingly immodest city gal, acknowledges that motherhood is pretty much like contending with a cloud of locusts swarming toward one's wheat--then laughs her "heiner" off about it.
Under her gifted muse's care, stories about childbirth, holiday acrobatics (sans religious ties), and raising two kids in a tiny New York apartment read like standup comedy routines; they also give way to bittersweet reflections on her own youth--goofy boyfriends, repressed sexual behavior, and all. Yes, she swears; yes, she delves deeply into issues anatomical, gastronomical, and diaporial. But for hip stay-at-homers who find sustenance in friendships honed at neighborhood playgrounds (not slapped together like cold deli meats at those contrived mommy-and-me meetings), Ayun Halliday might just become the patron saint of blissfully imperfect motherhood. Even mommies who lack Halliday's affinity for "unhusking" their breasts in public will find moments of empathy in this mirthful sprint through life as the family "Milk Monkey." --Liane Thomas
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