Home Game by Michael Lewis
Release date: 2009 / 197 pages
Synopsis (from back cover): “When he became a father, Michael Lewis found himself expected to feel things that he didn’t feel, and to do things that he couldn’t see the point of doing. At first this made him feel guilty, until he realized that all around him fathers were pretending to do one thing, to feel one way, when in fact they felt and did all sorts of things, then engaged in what amounted to an extended cover-up.”
First line: “I inherited from my father a peculiar form of indolence– not outright laziness so much as a gift for avoiding unpleasant chores without attracting public notice.”
Review: So, ever read a book and after 20 pages become distracted, thinking of all of the people you can’t wait to recommend it to or buy it for as gifts? Well, that is Home Game by Michael Lewis.
Lewis has an uncanny ability to make subjects palatable that I do not have a great initial interest in (how the on base percentage should have revolutionized baseball, how the evolution of the outside linebacker has revolutionized football…). In fact, he makes such subjects much more than palatable – I usually read his works in one sitting! And Home Game is no exception, except the subject matter is very accessible, right from the first line.
Lewis’s foray into fatherhood is so funny I caught myself laughing out loud throughout – and my husband and I do not even have children! When I finished, I had no fewer than nine passages marked for this review (and I was restraining myself…).
His initial premise to write the book was as follows:
“At some point in the last few decades, the American male sat down at the negating table with the American female and – let us be frank – got fleeced. The agreement he signed foisted all sorts of new paternal responsibilities on him and gave him nothing in return. Not the greater love of his wife, who now was encouraged to view him as an unreliable employee. Not the special love from his child, who, no matter how many times he fed and changed and wiped and walked her, would always prefer her mother in a pinch.” (42)
“The other [reason for writing this book] was that I noticed a tendency to gloss over the unpleasant aspects of parenthood, in part because it’s unseemly to complain about one’s children but also because there is a natural inclination to forget that there was anything to complain about. But there is. In the first few weeks after a child is born – or at least after a child of mine is born – it is as if someone must pay for whatever it endured when it exited the womb and entered the world.” (66)
This second premise rang true for me as I have recently witnessed my sister’s foray into motherhood and sympathetically listened to her concern that mothers everywhere had conspired to leave out certain bits of parenthood. She was shocked (as was I) by how all-consuming and work-intensive mothering was. Granted, she jumped in with a 10 month old who was nearly walking, but still… I couldn’t help but be surprised by the sheer, relentless labor of parenting, too!
But as my sister soon realized, and as Lewis concedes near the end:
“After every new child, I learn the same lesson, grudgingly: If you want to feel the way you’re meant to feel about the new baby, you need to do the grunt work. It’s only in caring for a thing that you become attached to it.” (165)
Before I close, I just have to include a few examples of the humor that brings this little book to life. Lewis had an uncanny way of catching me off-guard with a thoroughly masculine metaphor for some intimately nurturing emotional moment.
For example:
“I figured that the chemical rush that attended new motherhood might get me off the hook – that Tabitha would happily embrace all the new unpleasant chores and I’d stop in from time to time to offer advice. She’d do the play-by-play; I’d do the color commentary.” (25)
“A family is like a stereo system: A stereo system is only as good as its weakest component, and a famly is only as happy as its unhappiest member. Occasionally that is me; more often it is someone else; and so I must remain vigilant, lest the pleasure of my own life be dampened by their unhappiness.” (136)
“As always, it’s hard to say whether it’s developmental or just mental. Must the seven-year-old mind discover for itself every possible way to offend other people before it can settle on a more sociable approach? Is this just the bug that comes with the software upgrade?” (145)
And what a gift that Lewis has turned his remarkable gift for story-telling and sharp wit to a subject that affects us all! Highly recommended…
This really sounds good. Adding it to my TBR books!
Here is my TSS post