Guardian Family: Confessions of a Full Time Mother

[morningpaper]

Confessions of a Full Time Mother

"Kirsty Gunn is not working on her next novel. She is not a columnist for the London Review of Books. She has chosen instead to disappear from the professional world and embrace a domestic life just as rich and interesting and inspiring ... "

PAH! She's opted out of the professional world - well except for this article and the book she has just written about her "year as a full time mum" - full time that is, except for the 30 hours a week that her children are at school in which I presume she fannies about writing drivel like this.

At first I thought it was an ironic joke, but sadly not. Perhaps she is friends with that woman who survived the concentration-camp conditions of Fulham after that breeze blew her wooden grapes off the sideboard...

She has a house on the portobello rd (worth millions) and a house in Scotland and writes novels...right. Just like any other stay at home mother then.
What pile of self-dramatising crap. She works at home ffs and has two school age daughters. It's hardly the bloody Somme. She has at least five hours a day to write her pretentious twaddle.

I expect she gets published because she and her husband are mates with someone influential who also lives in Notting Hill. Just a wild guess.

Playing devil's advocate here a bit, but if she's a mum and a writer, why can't she combine the two and write about her experiences as a mum?

Oh, no, not another one of these!

WHO buys this tripe?!

Seriously, instead of lambasting it, don't buy it! Vote with your purse.

If her tome doesn't sell, she might not get any more book deals and then maybe some of us will be spared.

Gosh, I hope she is reading this ! It might sort of tell her to give up her day job as a writer and try something else, or at least another topic !

Like other authors and gurus whose names we can't mention incase we get sued, it MUST be of value to know that one's target audience isn't well pleased !

I don't mind if people write about their experiences as a mum/ dad/ boring old fart, if they do it well.

But this is drivel

Of course she can do it. I have done it myself. But this is so incredibly pretentious, fake and self-dramatising (two school age kids, husband, plenty of money = a war zone, I think NOT) and hideous to read.

[Drums fingers and hums the refrain from 'Who Let the Dogs Out?']

Honestly, just when I thought chick lit and historical fiction were taking bookselling to new lows, and that it was okay to resurface from the glut of 'A Year in [place outside London]' crap . . .

[Off to buy one of those tragic trainwreck of a childhood books from Tesco . . . ]

"She's not working on her next novel", no, she's publicising her most recent book!

I wonder how much time she spends at home now she's 'promoting' this drivel.

Yawn.

'You ask me if I'm lonely?'

Um, no, because that would imply someone cares.

Why should she mind any criticism? I write stuff. I get paid. The only thing that really matters is the cheque. Obviously I'm cross if there's a mistake in it but I don't think the process of writing something that will sell is wrong.

And of course the Guardian which I had thought was just about the only paper in the UK left which had any sort of feminist views should prefer women writers who earn the money in their family and it certainly shouldn't be encouaring women to think staying home and cleaning up is some sort of religiously wonderful and satisficying experience. They should be saying if it is that much fun why aren't men queuing up to do it? Instead it is now apparently peddling the usual view that mothers belong at home and only get satifisfaction when their only aim in life is getting the children's homework bags ready for the next day. Plus ca change.

That article is AWFUL. What a load of dull claptrap. I like Mathamoo's account. That is closer to my day

uuurgh - what a load of sentimental old crap she writes!!

'Why should she mind any criticism? I write stuff. I get paid. The only thing that really matters is the cheque.'

Too right, Xenia!

My sister is a journalist.

As she puts it, if a person can't take criticism or people who don't like what she's paid to write, she's in the wrong profession, because that's part and parcel of this industry, starting with your work colleagues, subeditor and on up.

I find it a bit offensive that she describes normal daily life as a war-zone tbh. If she'd ever been in a real effing war-zone, I doubt if she'd use such crass terminology. FFS, get some perspective. I know, I know, maybe it's just lighthearted throwaway phrase, but context is all, and from her, it doesn't sound lighthearted, it sounds like she believes that a kid needing their arse wiped is actually on a par with having Agent Orange rained down on you. If there's irony or humour there, it's not well-written enough to have come across.

You are not alone in that sentiment, Caligula. I thought the same thing.

One of my uncles was a medic in the Vietnam conflict - a conscript because he was from a poor family.

He's a physician now, but he never fails to shake his head when he hears things described as a war zone. He just quips, 'They're really lucky they have NO IDEA.'

She's not the one who says it's a war zone - that's her friend Will A. She says it's like 'a fenced-off land, a zone' - just somewhere separate, I think.

Oh, so more like a refugee camp, then .

expat.

Xenia the Guardian is peddling nothing of the sort. Anyone unfamiliar with being a SAHM would immediately take the message from this article, that becoming a SAHM is an extremely bad idea because you obviously lose all common sense and intelligence. In fact, are you sure you didn't write it?

Actually, he (apparently - 'cleverly') says: "And all I can think is: you've just left your house behind you with your children in it and that must be like you've left somewhere ... that's like a war zone, somewhere I can't even imagine ... "

To which she replies: 'And this is it entirely'.
Oh, bollocks.

'a fenced-off land, a zone'. Oh right. I'd better tell dh (who comes from former East Berlin and is in fact a SAHD atm) that.

Oh, yes, right up there with high-tailing it out of the Darfur when you've had nothing to eat for days and you're children are dying of malnutrition and dysentery.