It. Goes. So. Fast.: The Year of No Do-Overs

In this touching memoir, Kelly (The Bullet), cohost of NPR’s All Things Considered, meditates on her complicated emotions during her oldest son’s senior year of high school. Lamenting the soccer games she missed because of her job, Kelly decided to record her reflections on the months leading up to the graduation of her son James in the hope that doing so would allow her to “show up and be present.” In addition to the expected accounts of going on college trips and preparing James for prom, Kelly describes juggling her reporting and parenting, recounting how she learned James had Covid while she was covering a speech from President Biden and how she turned down her editor’s request that she travel to Ukraine to report on the war so she could instead spend more time with her son before he left for college. This showcases Kelly’s knack for connecting with audiences through snappy prose and affecting candor, and she beautifully captures the chaos and pathos of parenting, as when she writes of her son, “Our bond has changed and stretched and been tested, sometimes sorely tested, over eighteen years. But perhaps the pain was the cracking of the walls as the room grew.” Parents will cherish this. (Apr.)