Présentation de l'éditeur
A hilarious and deliciously scathing send-up of motherhood as practiced in the upper echelons of Manhattan society, from the coauthor of
The Right Address and
Wolves in Chic Clothing.
The mothers on Manhattan’s chic Upper East Side are highly educated, extremely wealthy, and very competitive. They throw themselves and all of their energy and resources into full-time child rearing, turning their kids into the unwitting pawns in a game where success is measured in precocious achievements, jam-packed schedules, and elite private-school pedigrees.
Hannah Allen has recently moved to the neighborhood with her New York City–bred investment banker husband and their two-year-old daughter, Violet. She’s immediately inundated by an outpouring of advice from her not-so-well-intentioned new friends and her overbearing, socially conscious mother-in-law, who coach her on matters ranging from where to buy the must-have $300 baby dress to how to get into the only pre-pre-preschool that counts. Despite her better instincts and common sense, Hannah soon finds herself caught up in the competitive whirl of high-stakes mothering.
Extrait
One
I am staring at the crystalline frozen tundra of ice–licked Alaska. Surrounded by an endless snowy desert, a little Eskimo girl pounds her way through the rushing, snowflake–laden wind as cheerful music plays.
“
Put on your kami–kluk
to stay warm and dry…”
No, I didn’t board a flight to Juneau. I’m watching
Sesame Street with my daughter, Violet. It’s one of Grover’s world–friendly segments where global cultures are profiled through the dewy, pure lens of a child’s eyes. We visit a Chinese boy who is a top acrobat and can spin fourteen plates on his face and a little Indonesian girl who can balance six bowls on the top of her head. While dancing.
Today Grover has transported us to the forty–ninth state—and our local lass is suiting up to face the Arctic chill, with the help of her mother, who sews fur pelts together to fashion a
tikiyook, or coat, to repel the subzero temps. She rushes out into the crisp fresh air to meet other children, also clad in PETA’s worst nightmare, and skips off into the fluffy white mounds, laughing sweetly.
It all looks so wholesome, so simple, so uncomplicated. No fancy schools to get into, no apartments to compare. It looked pleasant there, out in the bleak but weirdly alluring slate of glistening frost punctuated only by playful tykes toting their homemade lunches to school in swinging buckets.
But then the bilious pit in my stomach reasserted itself, and I couldn’t help but think this awful, impure thought: I bet one of the moms is looking over the other kids’
kami–kluks to see if the stitching is better. Or if the book sack one mom made is as creatively patterned as another. I am certain one family’s igloo is grander, another’s dogsled more impressive.
I was watching this on my television, in my apartment, not set in a downy white backdrop, but rather in the lion’s den of competitive mommies: New York City’s Upper East Side. In California, where my husband, Josh, and I lived before the relocation plunge a month ago, the one orange Bugaboo stroller on our block was so strange and uncommon a sight, people thought aliens had delivered it via flying saucer. In New York, the Rolls Royce of strollers is as common as yellow cabs—and the streets are just as jammed with them, but instead of reeking of an overpowering air–freshener–and–curry combo, they smelled of Kiehl’s–scrubbed babies.
It’s gotten to the point where I don’t even want to walk up Madison Avenue; while my kid looks like Baby Old Navy exploded, I routinely bump into neighbors with children so perfectly preened in smocked dresses, rickrack–collared linen blouses, shiny Mary Janes with lace socks, and enormous bows in their styled hair. My mother–in–law gives us baby clothes that are marked Dry Clean Only. Unless they’re linen, in which case yours truly gets to crack out the ironing
