The Mother Daughter Show is Here

Oh today has been a hellish day.  One that had me starting in massive pain and ending the same way.  The only thing that made it worse was the doctor saying....."I'm sorry but there is not anything I can really do to help you."  I hate being allergic to so much medication!


I finally made it home after an all day doctor trip and over 250 miles covered.  (Is it a Texas thing that you travel forever to get to a doctor?)  Found out my own JD (daughter) is in pain from tendinitis in her Achilles tendon.  So she is pretty well out of commission unless she is having to be at work.  It sucks!  


I had to find something positive about today.  Honestly.....I really needed a good outlook on the day.  Thankfully I have an interview with Natalie Wexler sitting in my email.  PERFECT!  She has a wonderful new book out titled The Mother Daughter Show. It seems to be perfect for me and my recently graduated JD aka College Girl.  Here is what she had to share with me.

The audience I had in mind when I was writing The Mother Daughter Show was primarily mothers of teenage—or college-age—daughters rather than the daughters themselves. It’s written from the point of view of three mothers of graduating high school seniors, all of whom would really like to know more about their daughters’ lives. (And, like many teenagers, the daughters would prefer not to give their mothers any more information than necessary.)

But even though I wasn’t targeting college-age young women, I hope they would still find the book engaging—and I hope it would help spark conversation between them and their mothers. One possible topic would be mother-daughter relationships in general. In the book, each of my main characters is not only a mother but also a daughter herself, and each has a problematic relationship with her aging mother.

One theme in the book is the way women’s relationships with their own mothers can shape their interaction with their daughters, for better or for worse. Two of my characters unconsciously replicate, to some extent, the very things that drove them crazy about their own mothers—in one case by trying to control her daughter’s life and in the other by being too needy and clingy. My third main character reacts against her mother by adopting a diametrically opposed parenting style: afraid of alienating her daughter by engaging in the kind of harsh criticism she was subjected to, she finds it difficult to place any limits on her daughter at all.

It might be interesting to have a discussion with your daughter about whether your own relationship with your mother has influenced the way you’ve interacted with her—perhaps you’ll have different ideas about that. And you might ask her (if you’re brave!) whether she thinks she would raise a daughter differently from the way she was raised, or whether she’d follow your own approach.

Another theme in the novel is the nearly universal one of teenage daughters (and sons too, of course) pulling away from their parents and trying to create their own zone of privacy—often to their mothers’ dismay. At least one of my characters, after being rebuffed by her daughter, remembers acting similarly during her own teenage years and experiences a sudden stab of sympathy for her mother. So you might talk to your daughter about your own feelings of wanting to separate from your parents during your adolescence and compare them to the way she has felt. You might talk about how parents can best handle their children’s need to separate from them. My hope is that whatever you find in the book that prompts conversation, it will ultimately lead you and your daughter to realize what you have in common and to bring you closer.

This was hosted via Tribute Books.  A wonderful company that gives personal support to both writers and bloggers.  I thank you for all you have done to encourage me!

The Mother Daughter Show Summary At Barton Friends a D.C. prep school so elite its parent body includes the President and First Lady - three mothers have thrown themselves into organizing the annual musical revue. Will its Machiavellian intrigue somehow enable them to reconnect with their graduating daughters, who are fast spinning out of control? By turns hilarious and poignant, The Mother Daughter Show will appeal to anyone who's ever had a daughter - and anyone who's ever been one.
 

Natalie Wexler's Bio: Natalie Wexler is the author of The Mother Daughter Show (Fuze Publishing 2011) and an award-winning historical novel, A More Obedient Wife. She is a journalist and essayist whose work has appeared in the Washington Post Magazine, the American Scholar, the Gettysburg Review, and other publications, and she is a reviewer for the Washington Independent Review of Books. She has also worked as a temporary secretary, a newspaper reporter, a Supreme Court law clerk, a legal historian, and (briefly) an actual lawyer. She lives in Washington, D.C., with her husband.

Price: $19.95 paperback, $9.99 ebook
ISBN: 9780984141296
Pages: 274
Release: December 2011

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