Gag expanded to book length - but very funny. ( )

This book has been on my TBR for years; the title appealed to me in the moment - I'm not a mommy but I can curse with the best of them. A few months ago, I had it in hand to purge, but I read the flap and the author is a New Yorker columnist so I held it back. After reading Are We Having Fun Yet by Lucy Mangan, I thought it would be the right time to read this one as a comparison of sorts: how would the American version of the concept compare to the UK version? How would a male author's portrayal of a columnist-working-from-home mother of two stack up against the same dynamic in the UK?

It didn't, obviously. I wasn't able to make it through February. But I'm not sure this is a condemnation; it's just a very different delivery and one that ultimately didn't suit me at all because - hilariously - of the swearing.

Do you remember the comedian Sam Kennison? For those that don't, he was an American stand-up comedian and actor. A former Pentecostal preacher, he performed stand-up routines that were characterized by intense sudden tirades, punctuated with his distinctive scream, similar to charismatic preachers. The Screaming Mommy is the Sam Kennison of mommy diarists, and I think you have to have a certain sense of humor to appreciate it. Entire paragraphs of all-caps profanity, using f*ck as every part of speech, usually in the same sentence.

Apart from that, it's not bad, but still didn't work as a book; if I skipped those tirades, the narrative still failed to connect with me and frankly, I found some of it disturbingly hypocritical - like when she's wondering why her 12-year-old son needs to be medicated to control his angry, emotional outbursts in school, as she's smashing an entire sink full of dishes with a hammer because she tried to rinse her hands off, and the splash back from a dirty cereal bowl stained her silk blouse.

In the author's defence, this book was based on a series of columns written for The New Yorker, and as columns, I think they'd have worked much better; outbursts like this are probably easier to chuckle over when they're fed to the audience once a month. All together like this in book form, it's just way too much. Lucy Mangan manages to convey the same frustration and angst in a way the reader can laugh with, rather than feeling as though they're laughing at the crazy person who escaped the asylum, and she manages to do it with a semblance of continuing plot, or at least character, development. ( )

I've read Ian Frazier's Cursing Mommy pieces in the New Yorker, and thought they were hysterical. I viewed a book with trepidation, because every Cursing Mommy piece follows the same trajectory, and how do you keep that going? But, library book, why not?

It is funny, as a collection of bits. As a book, it doesn't quite hold together. The humor flags. It never goes above being a collection of bits. As much as I laughed, I can't justify rating it higher as a book, because as a whole, it doesn't work.

2.5 stars and can't round it up. If you enjoyed the Cursing Mommy pieces, give it a whirl. If you didn't think they were funny, you won't like this. ( )

I have never read any of Frazier's contributions to The New Yorker magazine or his humour collection Coyote v. Acme. I placed a hold on a copy of this audiobook purely on a whim and because of it's very chicklit-styled cover. I want to call The Cursing Mommy - no, we never do find out her name - the modern Erma Bombeck. I love all of Erma Bombeck's books. The Cursing Mommy is a stay-at-home woman who struggles to keep it all together while dealing with two challenging kids (one has a thing for starting fires and other forms of delinquent behaviour, the other for fainting at school) and Larry, her husband who's capacitor obsession/hobby is slowly taking over their house, while at the same time fending off unwanted advances from Larry's creepy boss/client. Written in epistolary format covering the events of one calendar year, I love how Frazier has given voice and very human expressions to a character who fluctuates between moments of calm philosophical meditation and full on profanity-infused venting. Cynthia Nixon is absolutely perfect narrating this one, making it so easy to visualize our frustrated lead character. There is an awful lot of swearing in the book, as is alluded to by the title, but there are a lot of really good funny bits too, such as the book group's obsession with reading anti-Republican political tell-all books about the Bush administration (with a segue into Reagan territory); the insane things that as a parent volunteer our heroine (really, what else can one call her?) finds herself doing for her son's school; the crazy private-run healthcare company that jacks up premiums whenever the CEO needs an influx of cash and lets not forget the parking lot style grocery store they have (don't ask, I would just struggle to explain that one). On the downside, while the situations our heroine find herself in are all different, the fact that she always ends up lying on the floor screaming for help - except for the one time she ended up in a tree - gets a bit tedious as the story progresses.

Overall, a wonderful way to de-stress or, in my case, to put any stress of the holiday season into perspective, with a chuckle and a smile. ( )

Just flat out hilarious. Erma Bombeck and Nora Ephron would approve. For those of you who are volunteers at your children's schools, it's a must read. ( )