The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Diaz
The novel is ostensibly about the title character, Oscar, a 300-pound “lovesick ghetto nerd,” and his multi-generational family struggling under a Dominican curse, but his mom, Beli, nearly steals the story as an angry, abusive mother who doesn't know how to back down.
Mommie Dearest, Christina Crawford
The relationship depicted in Mommie Dearest between Joan Crawford and her adopted daughter, Christina, is the reason why I hate using a toothbrush to clean anything.
Loving Frank, Nancy Horan
A fictionalized account of Frank Lloyd Wright’s relationship with Mamah Bothwick Cheney, the wife of client Edwin Cheney. She was an educated sufferagette and mother of two; Wright was an architect on the rise and married father of six. They ran off together, which ruined her reputation although it didn’t seem to make much of a dent in his. Mamah was vilified as a bad mother and then bigger tragedies ensued.
Olive Kitteridge, Elizabeth Strout
Olive Kitteridge may not be a character you’ll like, but she’s someone you may like reading about. She’s overbearing, passive-aggressive, aloof, moody and sharp-tongued, but she’s also the one woman in town whose acid-drawn words and irritable wisdom provides the kind of dead-on insight that can make you squirm.
Lithium For Medea, Kate Braverman
A junkie named Rose copes with addiction, the boho squalor of Venice Beach, an impotent boyfriend who loves Star Trek, a father who’s dying of cancer, and a mother who’s a complete narcissist. From the first line, when we encounter Rose shooting up in the bathtub, until the last line, which offers a new kind of beginning, Lithium for Medea is poetry.
Medea, Euripides
The tragic tale of Medea, whose husband, Jason, dumps her for a real princess. In retaliation or grief, she kills their children.
A gorgeous waif, a handsome prince, a mean stepmother, and two jealous step-sisters that had to have been horrible to have such big feet in the days before there was a Nordstrom stocked with women’s shoes up to size 14... Cinderella dates back to 9th century China, and it first appeared in print during the 17th century in a book by French author Charles Perrault, which means there has been plenty of time to work out the story’s details.
So what I want to know is this: Where was the father when his new wife and her mug-faced daughters were making Cinderella’s life miserable? No “World’s Best Dad” mug for him.
