Why Animals Sleep So Close to the Road (and Other Lies I Tell My Children) - Hardcover

Konig, Susan

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 031233236X ISBN 13: 9780312332365

Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books, 2005

Synopsis

Susan Konig's warm, witty, and all-true story of becoming a work-from-home suburban mother--think Erma Bombeck meets I Don't Know How She Does It--is winning and laugh-out-loud funny.

Lifelong city dwellers, the Konig family can barely turn around in an apartment that seems to shrink with each addition. With baby #3 on the way, their home is nearing the bursting point. But it's the smallest inhabitants, a bold group of mice who don't mind living with four humans and a cat, who finally push the family to seek larger quarters, an adorable bungalow with a backyard and attic space, in the 'burbs.

Trading mice for a too-friendly local skunk, the family settles in and discovers the unexpected joys and trials of owning a home (prone to sewer backup), driving a minivan (mobile Cheerios repository), and raising three small children (countless sticky adventures). As they learn the local customs--how to respond after backing into a neighbor's car, when to expect a twenty-four-hour plumber to be actually on call, how much to clean before the cleaning lady comes--Susan Konig recounts her domestic adventures with equal doses of widsom and charm.

Honed by years as a journalist, Susan Konig's eye for detail reveals the charm and humor in the everyday situations that await her. Her story will make suburban dwellers laugh in recognition, while city dwellers count their blessings.

About this title

About the Author:

Susan Konig is a journalist who has been a staff writer for the Washington Post Style section, an editor at Seventeen, and a columnist for the New York Post. Her work has appeared in publications including Travel & Leisure, Ladies' Home Journal, Parade, and Us. She is a columnist for Catholic Digest and National Review Online. She lives with her family in the Hudson Valley.

Review:

“Susan Konig displays a winning ability to convey the humor, the quiet delight and the mild desperation she finds in rearing her four young children. A mixture of the tart and the sweet, Why Animals Sleep . . . [is] hilarious . . . brilliant and useful advice, refreshingly different from the usual dreary wisdom dished out by most parenting books. By the end of the first chapter, many moms will want to move next door to this maternal Solomon. What makes the book so entertaining is Konig's honesty, wit, and her sometimes unapologetically emotional notes. In the end, Konig displays a lovely perspective about her life, her marriage, her children, and her decisions in life.” ―USA Today

“Konig, an exceptional humorist on the order of Erma Bombeck and Jean Kerr, offers a superbly witty account of her family's move from a small Manhattan apartment to a house in the suburbs. This is no small accomplishment. . . . With droll honesty, Konig relates incidents of culture shock as she transitions from hip city mama (and one-time party girl) to suburban mom of three. . . .One for the maturing Sex and the City crowd.” ―Library Journal

“As a psychologist, I can't recommend lying to your children. But, as a psychologist, I can recommend laughter and this book will tickle your funny bone in every chapter.” ―Dr. Joyce Brothers

“Laugh-out-loud hilarious. Susan Konig tells the truth about exactly what you're in for when you have kids, a house in the suburbs, and a minivan with four pounds of Cheerios under the baby's car seat. Reading her book makes you wish she lives right next door, so you could get together and laugh between disasters.” ―Sandi Kahn Shelton, author of Preschool Confidential and What Comes After Crazy

“Thank you, thank you, Susan Konig, for telling the truth about American women: that most of us are not 'Baywatch babes'; that we have no idea how to canoodle; that, yes, we enjoy aspects of suburbia and we lie to our kids about roadkill. How refreshing to encounter a real-world mom, who doesn't pretend she's all that.” ―Elizabeth Cohen, author of The House on Beartown Road

“Susan Konig's memoir is a warm-hearted, insightful, and extremely funny portrait of a woman trying to negotiate the slippery transition from urbane city dweller to house-proud suburban mom. Her rationalization about why she lies to her children is fiendishly amusing and worth reading out loud to close friends. Readers will cringe in fear and burst with delight at the endless juggling, improvisation, and re-inventing Konig needs to keep her sanity, her marriage, and her kids in one place.” ―Bruce Stockler, author of I Sleep at Red Lights: A True Story of Life After Triplets

About this edition

• Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 031233236X
• ISBN 13: 9780312332365
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 224