Early in Paula Bomer's riveting Nine Months, nauseated Sonia, pregnant with a third (unplanned) baby, is hauling her two toddlers to the butcher on one of Brooklyn's muggiest summer days. She loses it, plopping herself down in the street and shrieking at passerby. It's a striking scene.
"Why, why must I be doing this?" Sonia fumes in frustration at her child-rearing duties. "Why can't I just do nothing?" It's perverse and horrifying--yet it smacks of truth. Bomer (Baby & Other Stories) encapsulates the struggle of modern-day moms who want desperately to have kids while resenting the mindless drudgery that comes from taking care of them. Her dark parody indulges an escape fantasy every mother has but few talk about.
Sonia drains the family's joint bank account and drives cross-country, having random sexual encounters, scarfing down fast food and staying in cheap hotels. In her quest for self-discovery, Sonia revisits her estranged sister and the art professor she slept with in college, while spending no time feeling guilty about leaving her husband and children behind. It's "me time" taken to the extreme--quite frankly, the kind of freedom about which many mothers dream--and it's a stunning thing to behold. Call Sonia's tale a push-back against helicopter parents, call her a rebel, but don't call her a bad mother. --Natalie Papailiou, author of blog MILF: Mother I'd Like to Friend