Product Description

A funny, knowing and absorbing first novel that mines the life of one frazzled and frumpy-feeling Manhattan stay-at-home mommy whose mind races with internal debate about husband management and the 2,617 daily tasks associated with taking care of two preschool age children. Her head also hums with the eternal question: should she go back to work?Set on playgrounds, in playgroups, at pre-schools and birthday parties, What Do You Do All Day? is both comic and wise. An American answer to Allison Pearsons I Dont Know How She Does It, heroine Jennifer Bradley and her daily dilemmassmall and largewill be instantly recognizable to reading mothers both working and non-workingeverywhere.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #758175 in Books
• Published on: 2005-10-01
• Released on: 2005-09-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 320 pages

Amazon.com Review
In What Do You Do All Day, first time novelist Amy Scheibe chronicles the pains, pleasures, and play-dates of a stay-at-home-mother who's struggling to be the best parent on the block while retaining some sliver of sanity. The fast-paced, spirited story--a sort of Bridget Jones for the modern mother--answers the title question easily. Jennifer Bradley has a miles-long list of daily duties (compounded by the absence of her loving but always traveling husband), including urging one-year-old Max to crawl in her presence and handling precocious four-year-old Georgia (whose response to being bathed with her brother is, "I'm not down with this, Jen"). But the question Jennifer can't seem to answer is whether what she does all day really matters. Scheibe crafts a well-rounded, realistic character in Jennifer--a thinking mother who is brutally honest about her ambivalence. Some days she wants to spend hours just staring at her kids, but on others, she yearns for her old job as an antiquities dealer. And what about that biography of Hannibal she's always wanted to write? Jennifer's constant worry that her "hard-earned identity of career woman/neofeminist" has been "thrown out with the baby's bathwater" brings a manic, amusing energy to the story, and propels her pell-mell down the brambly path of motherhood. --Brangien Davis

From Publishers Weekly
Scheibe's hilarious debut is rife with wry observations from one overwhelmed mother of two, Jennifer Bradley. Jennifer's life goes awry when her husband, Thom, sets off on a three-month business trip to Singapore, leaving her in New York to deal with their five-year-old daughter, Georgia, a princess in training, and their rambunctious toddler, Max. The author wittily explores the questions that plague modern-day, middle class moms: What does it mean to be a good mother? Is it possible to balance work and home life? How do you preserve your identity when you are being pulled in so many directions? With her husband temporarily out of the picture, Jennifer, a former antiques expert, seeks companionship with other Stay At Home Moms ("SAHMs") and finds common ground with some of them. There is Sven, the buff, gay part-time swimming instructor at the Y, who has adopted a Chinese girl with his partner, and Angela, a high-powered exec who was let go after her maternity leave. With a light touch and a sparkling plot, Scheibe takes on the conundrums—and beauty—of motherhood for driven yet nurturing women. (Oct.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The Washington Post
Novels about marriage and family life used to fall into the slightly insulting category of "domestic fiction." Judging by some of the novels written today, what might once have been considered domestic is now in no way domesticated. Events that take place within the home and, specifically, within a marriage can be some combination of surprising, disturbing, sexy, moving or funny.

Amy Scheibe's novel What Do You Do All Day? falls mostly into the funny category, and pungently so. Scheibe takes on the question of what happens to highly educated, affluent, formerly cool urban women when they stop working in order to raise their children. When Thom goes off on a three-month business trip to Singapore, his wife, Jennifer, is stranded with their son, Max, and their precocious daughter, Georgia. In the circumscribed universe of this book, the husband-wife dyad gets second billing, edged out by the dominant relationship between mother and child. The political concerns at the heart of this novel -- which include the conflict between motherhood and ambition -- are in evidence. But like a mother who deftly mixes her kid's amoxicillin with chocolate pudding, Scheibe laces What Do You Do All Day? with enough wit to make even the shrewdest readers feel they're not reading an "issues" novel: " 'Up up up' comes from Max's room, where he has finished his 'power n!

ap.' He sleeps like an SAT problem: six hours a night in two three-hour shifts, with two thirty-minute naps spaced four hours apart during the day."

Scheibe's knowing observations about all-consuming, alpha motherhood add a piquancy to a landscape that will be highly familiar to readers who find themselves at the weird juncture where Jimmy Choo meets Fisher-Price.

The period before parenthood begins might seem to offer a certain peacefulness. Not so in Joanna Briscoe's Sleep With Me. After Richard and Lelia meet a plain and (at least at first) unmemorable woman named Sylvie, she stealthily and steadfastly creeps into the couple's private space. Sylvie becomes fascinated with Lelia's pregnancy, and the reader can tell that something is not right with this interloper long before the characters in the novel do. When the repellent, pregnancy-in-jeopardy finale occurs, we've been expecting it for a long time, even if no one else has.

Briscoe alternates between Richard's and Lelia's points of view, a device that is not entirely successful since the sensibility of the writing never really shifts. The book is a pas de deux of information revealed and concealed, principally concerning an increasing flirtation between Richard and the surprisingly erotic Sylvie, but later also including Lelia's secret relationship with Sylvie as well.

The author has a good deal to say about marriage, some of it disparaging: "This, then, I realised, was what crap marriages were composed of. All those snapping couples who seemed to hate each other; pensioners silently reading over hotel meals; couples seething with a decade of resentments, their squabbling pale-faced kids in tow." Briscoe is a controlled and elegant writer, and, at least until the freak-out ending that begs for comparison with movies such as "Fatal Attraction," Sylvie is an inspired character.

Character itself is the focus of Ronlyn Domingue's The Mercy of Thin Air, which, like Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones, employs a dead narrator to comment on the activities of the living. But Domingue's Razi Nolan is a more stylized creature than Sebold's murdered Susie Salmon. She is also, at times, less finely drawn, which may be because the author already has enough to do: She's set herself the complicated task of telling the story of Razi's unfinished relationship with a young man named Andrew, as well as that of a contemporary couple, Amy and Scott, whose house Razi haunts 70 years after her own death.

Because this is essentially a ghost story, Domingue loads up on atmosphere. She also provides an original and compelling plotline about certain clandestine all-female parties held in the 1920s at which young women are educated about contraception and sexual awareness: "Diaphragms are similar to pessaries but have a spring hinge that folds so they can be properly placed. They are not yet readily available here. You must be fitted by a doctor and taught to use them. If you haven't married yet, get a fake wedding ring. Most doctors won't tell you a thing if you don't have a husband."

Blending the practical matters of marriage with the sentimental, Domingue has fashioned an emotionally satisfying story of love and longing. Her wistful novel bears little resemblance to the environment of darkness and obsession that infuses Briscoe's book or the fast-talking savvy of Scheibe's, but all three novels set their sights on the world that exists inside a home and inside a relationship, leaving out much of the vast space that surrounds it. And each, in its own way, makes the case that what happens to people in the confines of their own lives is enough to sustain a story until the end.

Reviewed by Meg Wolitzer
Copyright 2005, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

Customer Reviews

brilliant and ballsier than plain ol' mommy lit
How much do I LOVE when I find a book where the heroine is hilarious, angry, potty-mouthed and lovable all at the same time? Reading the book was like spending time with an incredibly cool new mommy friend, like one of those playdates where you let the kids play with old cheerios and you and the mom fall in love and drink wine. Exactly what I want to do all day.

fun, fun, fun!
I am reading this book now and am LOVING it!! As a former executive and a current SAHM, (stay at home mom), I know first hand how challenging it can be sometimes to trade in meetings and promotions for diapers and bottles. Scheibe captures it all with humor and aplomb! Highly recommended.

Been there, done that
If you've ever been asked "What do you do all day?" after you've spent the last umpteen hours fixing mac n' cheese, putting wheels back on a Tonka truck and having tea with Barbie, this book is for you. Amy Scheibe captures the feelings of all stay-at-home moms on the brink of desperation with both sensitivity and humor. It's Desperate Housewives, Manhattan style. Read it when the kids go for their naps.