My Vote for Most Chilling Shakespeare Allusion of 2010!
Several years ago I bought Donna Tartt's The Secret History. Before I even cracked the spine, a Mommy friend snatched it off my coffee table and warned me: dead child inside.
That gave me the idea of starting a website called Books that F**k with Moms' Heads. Mommies would subscribe, and I'd make a fortune.
But I never got around to it. I've been thinking about this website concept a lot today because the theme of my weekend was Books (and Stories in General) that F**k with Moms' Heads. Highlights:
1) Cold Case episode about homeless mom who gets shot by crazy man who seemed like a nice person for the first forty-five minutes.
2) That movie No Reservations. Started watching it and then quickly turned it off after remembering something about mom dying in car crash and Catherine Zeta Jones having to raise the kid.
3) Room by Emma Donaghue. That's for my book club meeting tomorrow. The Room is where an abducted woman is locked up for seven years with her son, the spawn of her abductor/rapist. Riveting horror about sexual, psychological, you-name-it crimes against mother and child. And maybe also some kind of weird attachment parenting allegory. Bonus feature: mother and child watch a production of A Midsummer Night's Dream, and child freaks out when Fairy Queen Titania can't protect her adoptive little boy (another dead mother plot, btw) from her perverse, estranged husband.
From now on I will think about Room every time I think about A Midsummer Night's Dream. And then I will think about some alternate version of the play called Fairy Bower or something and get totally freaked out
Several years ago I bought Donna Tartt's The Secret History. Before I even cracked the spine, a Mommy friend snatched it off my coffee table and warned me: dead child inside.
That gave me the idea of starting a website called Books that F**k with Moms' Heads. Mommies would subscribe, and I'd make a fortune.
But I never got around to it. I've been thinking about this website concept a lot today because the theme of my weekend was Books (and Stories in General) that F**k with Moms' Heads. Highlights:
1) Cold Case episode about homeless mom who gets shot by crazy man who seemed like a nice person for the first forty-five minutes.
2) That movie No Reservations. Started watching it and then quickly turned it off after remembering something about mom dying in car crash and Catherine Zeta Jones having to raise the kid.
3) Room by Emma Donaghue. That's for my book club meeting tomorrow. The Room is where an abducted woman is locked up for seven years with her son, the spawn of her abductor/rapist. Riveting horror about sexual, psychological, you-name-it crimes against mother and child. And maybe also some kind of weird attachment parenting allegory. Bonus feature: mother and child watch a production of A Midsummer Night's Dream, and child freaks out when Fairy Queen Titania can't protect her adoptive little boy (another dead mother plot, btw) from her perverse, estranged husband.
From now on I will think about Room every time I think about A Midsummer Night's Dream. And then I will think about some alternate version of the play called Fairy Bower or something and get totally freaked out
you NEED to do that blog! i have a friend who serves that function for me; she knows i can't do suffering children (Pan's Labyrinth nearly did me in), dying moms, abandonment, etc. but she is ONLY ONE WOMAN. she cannot perform this service for everyone! DO IT FOR ALL OF US. we don't need Common Sense Media to tell us what's appropriate for our kids; we need Wussy Mom Media to tell us what's going to turn us into a sobbing, sniveling, haunted, non-sleeping puddle! and aaaaaaaaack, hello, did you read that New Yorker short story set in the children's cancer ward in which Titania's adopted little human boy gets leukemia??
ReplyDeleteOh my LORD. I did not read that New Yorker story, but now I will. Even though I'll regret it.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the positive feedback on the Wussy Mom info site idea. Seriously, one of these days . . .