Playing House: Notes of a Reluctant Mother

The latest from psychologist and prolific essayist Slater (The $60,000 Dog: My Life with Animals) is a slender, lyrically voiced collection of her essays, written over time, comprising personal experiences with sex, self-esteem, parenting, mental illness, and childhood family dysfunction. Slater's digressive style is one of her hallmarks, as is the confessional, glass-half-full deliverance of her travails and triumphs as a wife, mother, psychologist, foster child, and cancer survivor. Many of these vignettes are bold and entertaining; some of her indulgences, such as outing publicly her lack of interest in marital sex ("I have been gripped by sex the same as the trap grips the ferret's leg and he has to bite off his limb to set himself free. What kind of fun is this?") and the details of her affair while engaged to be married, teeter precariously between too much information and bad taste. Any shortcomings are assuaged by giving readers access to keen observations of nature and human nature, and her accumulated wisdom, which provide a compelling, highly relatable narrative. The more uplifting passages depict moments of newfound personal and spiritual enlightenment, such as when she discovered a relationship between mood and self-neglect, and that her depression lessened when her physical appearance improved. (Nov.)