Don’t Wait Up: Confessions of a Stay-at-Work Mom

Astrof, a sitcom writer and producer, offers a hilarious and heartfelt essay collection about, among other topics, her life as a Los Angeles “stay-at-work” mother with a demanding schedule and a fear so great of the bedtime hour that she sometimes lingers in her car until her husband has put their two children to sleep. In the sidesplitting opening essay, Astrof describes taking her seven- and nine-year-olds to a water park one weekend, while having no intention of going in the water herself. Readers will laugh out loud as she relents and dons a child’s extra-extra-large bathing suit—albeit backwards. There are heartbreaking pieces as well—one describes the frightening few weeks when, after her parents’ divorce, her unstable mother absconded with six-year-old Astrof (and, almost equally painfully, declined to abduct her brother). Nor was life with Astrof’s father easy, as he sent her to Camp Shane (aka “Camp Shame”) to lose weight. Though Astrof’s collection is often trenchant in its look at her own difficult childhood, it is also permeated with a sense of love for her kids, and is sure to resonate deeply with other parents. [em]Kristyn Keene, ICM. (July) [/em]