Pearson - Playing House

PRAISE FOR Playing House

A deft new comic novel by Canadian author Patricia Pearson. Frannie seems to be wedged in the literary crawl space between Bridget Jones (single woman, bad habits, looking for love) and Kate Reddy (married, harried working mother of two in the smash British novel I Dont Know How She Does It).Macleans

Hilarious. Pearson is an award-winning journalist and crime writer, as well as a master of hyperbole and comic characterizations. She writes with such snap and spirit, you can keep friends and family in stitches reading sections aloud. You see, Frannie MacKenzie, a quasi-autobiographical creationas a woman and even as a new motheris the antithesis of super. And you love her, and Pearson, all the more for it. Pearsons sophisticated storytelling is not only satirical but side-splitting. Definitely a movie Id love to see. The Toronto Sun

Playing House scores twice; it tickles the funny bone and hits a nerve about our introspective modern life. Told in Frannies self-deprecating voice, Patricia Pearsons Playing House is a witty, laugh-out-loud account of, well, angst at the entanglement of commitments that come with an Impending Infant and with the arrival itself. The Globe and Mail

This premise, despite its serious nature, provides lots of laughs and poignancy in the hands of an author whos obviously very experienced with babies. Throughout the fast-paced fiction, the characters adapt to their sudden, surprise self-imposed family life in a realistic way. However, the plot never loses its sense of humor, even during the more dramatic moments. Winnipeg Free Press

Playing House plays the perils of parenthood like a Canuck road movie. Its a trip. Toronto Star

Playing House is a riotous romp into the territory of accidental pregnancy and childbirth. Like motherhood itself, the book is beguiling and bewildering, engaging and exasperating and, ultimately, a lesson of love. Alison Wearing, author of Honeymoon in Purdah

Like Anne Lamott, Patricia Pearson writes about life, love, dating, and unexpected motherhood with humor, anger, and ulitmately, forgiveness. This book has an irreverent sadness, but its tinged with a kind of real joy people never want to talk about, especially when life takes that sometimes ridiculous, totally uncalled for, turn. Lisa Gabriele, author of Tempting Faith DiNapoli

A must read a stylish, sex-and-the-city look at the very personal life of a wise and witty woman. Melissa Senate, author of See Jane Date

For Ambrose,
and in memory of Mary Ann Duffy

New life announces itself as a mystery that a mother cannot solve. Something happens, a certain gear-shifting in the body that she notes, but makes no sense of. Especially if she isnt planning to be pregnant. I shall offer myself as an example. I did not have a basal thermometer handy on my bureau, or any recall as to when I last had my period. I was not expecting to read What to Expect When Youre Expecting. I was barely even in a relationship, with a man about whom I knew little. I was simply going about my business, enjoying early spring in New York City, when all of a sudden I woke up in the clean morning sunshine to find that my breasts had inflated like dinghies and were heavier than my head.

Late for work, I fiddled with my bra straps irritably, to no avail. They had all the supportive power of Scotch tape. I searched through the clothes on the floor of my one-room apartment and dragged on a shirt taut with Lycra, then I cupped my breasts in my hands as I stepped gingerly down the four flights of stairs of my walk-up, arranging my arms just soas I entered the brisk-stepping crowds on Sixth Avenueso that I could look like I was clutching myself in vexed contemplation over the Great Issues of the Day, as opposed to holding my tits up.

My first assumption was that I had a bad bout of PMS, so I dosed myself with evening primrose oil. We were wrapping up our April issue at The Pithy Review, heading into the inevitable panic of magazine production. There were last-minute changes, troubles with ad placement, authors to placate after pompous sentences were slashed from their essays, an editor-in-chief who rendered himself inaccessible behind closed doors in a pointed sulk. It happened every month, as if none of us possessed a short-term memory.

I had, myself, a rant to scribble for the back page, which Id put off until the last minute, and a half-finished play to complete by the first of April. There was a letter to be sent to the editor of The New York Times about the treatment of carriage horses in Central Park, and postcards home to be mailed, lists of ideas, Post-it notes about people to meet, cocktails and beet chips to consume at the Temple Bar.

Life in a city as opportunistic and exuberant as New York always felt busy, even if nothing got done. It was the whirl of the place, the sense of movement that mattered to me, and I grounded myself with small certitudes: I am here. I pay my rent. I like my friends. I have a membership to MOMA. God, when I think about it now, what a slender ledge of a life I was comfortably sitting on then.

On Good Friday, I was in Rizzolis bookstore contemplating the new Sylvia Plath biography, when I realized that my nipples were so sensitive that I couldnt turn around quickly without crying out. For a few days, I donned the softest fabrics I could find in my closetan old cashmere sweater my mother had given me to coddle myself through a documentary on Kurds, a silk blouse, and double-wired bra to ineffectually brace me for dance lessonsand still I walked around going, Ow, ow, ow, as if Id fallen into a patch of nettles.

Perplexed, I peered at myself in my small bathroom mirror, which entailed leaning over sideways while standing on the worn enamel sides of my tub, effectively looming into the circular looking-glass from stage left. My breasts looked more or less the same as always. My nipples seemed darker, and even bigger, somehow, but I hardly ever looked at my breasts. I liked my waist and my rear end, but in truth my breasts grew in a bit droopy from the outset, with the nipples too low on the orbs, as if Mother Nature stuck them on during a game of pin the tail on the donkey. I had a tendency to fling my arms above my head like the Venus de Milo whenever lovers were afoot, in order to lift the nipples to a more acceptable position. It took a bit of work, this maneuver, especially when I had to walk across the room to answer the phone. But worth it, you know, for not revealing everything your nakedness actually offers to say.

Id been arm lifting quite a bit of late, because of a fellow named Calvin Puddie. No. Pudhee. Or no, that doesnt look rightI think it could be Puhdey. In any event, its some sort of French-Canadian name, or more specifically Acadian, as in the French who emigrated to eastern Canada, and otherwise to Louisiana.

That strikes me as a rather stark pair of choices, I told Calvin on our second date. Either they opted for the frozen, craggy coast of Cape Breton and slogged away in coal mines, or they got to do Mardi Gras? A or B?

Well, its a bit more complicated than that, he said lightly. But being a rather laconic man, he chose not to elaborate.

I knew that Calvins father was a coal miner, and that he himself had been aiming no higher than a job as a janitor at the local veterans hall when someone pointed out that he was musically gifted and ought to pursue it. This inspired him to head to Halifax to study music, after which he moved to Toronto, and from there, at some point, to New York. He worked as a jazz musician, living off the avails of his art, which was the annual salary equivalent of two Smarties and a piece of string.