© 2016 Karen Karbo
Karbo, Karen
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage-and-retrieval systems, without prior permission in writing from the Publisher, except for brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Motherhood made a man out of me / by Karen Karbo.
pages cm
ISBN 9780997068320 (eBook)
1. Motherhood – Fiction. 2. Pregnancy – Fiction. 3. Female friendship – Fiction. I. Title.
PS3561.A584 M68 2016
813'.54–DC23
2013044757
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Hawthorne Books & Literary Arts
2201 Northeast 23rd Avenue
3rd Floor
Portland, Oregon 97212
Form:
Adam McIsaac/Sibley House
Set in Paperback
Originally published in 2000 by Bloomsbury USA, New York
First Hawthorne Edition, 2016
For Fiona
ALSO BY KAREN KARBO
Non-fiction
Julia Child Rules: Lessons on Savoring Life
How Georgia Became O’Keeffe: Lessons on the Art of Living
The Gospel According to Coco Chanel: Life Lessons from the World’s Most Elegant Woman
How to Hepburn: Lessons on Living from Kate the Great
The Stuff of Life: A Daughter’s Memoir
Generation Ex: Tales from the Second Wives Club
My Foot is Too Big for the Glass Slipper (with Gabrielle Reece)
Big Girl in the Middle (with Gabrielle Reece)
Fiction
The Diamond Lane
Trespassers Welcome Here
For Young Adults
Minerva Clark Gets a Clue
Minerva Clark Goes to the Dogs
Minerva Clark Gives Up the Ghost
Contents
Introduction: Whitney Otto
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Acknowledgments
Whitney Otto
KAREN AND I MET AT A PARTY. MY HUSBAND, INFANT SON, and I had recently (and impulsively) moved from San Francisco to Portland, where we knew no one, ending up at this party because the hostess was a friend of a New York friend of mine. Karen, who was standing on the other side of a kind of breakfast bar, introduced herself, and not only did I take an instant liking to her but she felt like someone I had already known a very long time in a very good way. She was funny, a writer, and close to my age with a baby only three weeks older than my five-month-old. We quickly bonded over being writers and mothers.
We exchanged numbers and in short order were spending many post-nap (the kids, not us) afternoons together, often at the zoo. The creepy bat house looms large in these memories. I should mention that none of my closest friends had kids, so I was pretty much alone in this complex, rewarding/frustrating experience, not to mention being a mother who writes, which is a whole other enchilada that only other writers can fully understand. Karen, a writer/mother herself came into my life at exactly the right moment. The fact that she was wry and unsentimental made her nearly perfect.
Not long after Karen and I met she started her novel Motherhood Made a Man Out of Me. She wrote it because she said that her biggest surprise about becoming a mother was that no one ever told you what it was really like: the emotional changes, the physical changes, the changes to your marriage, the changes to your psyche. “No one tells you that now you’ll be capable of homicide.” Or, “If I have one piece of advice for a woman looking to get pregnant, it’s train for a decathlon.” Or that those Oxfords “that look stunning on twenty-year-old waifs with thin ankles and no responsibilities … made me look like a Russian street sweeper.”
Not only were there almost no books on the reality of pregnancy and early motherhood, it seemed no one was interested in publishing any, including Karen’s publisher. G. P. Putnam’s Sons had enthusiastically published Karen’s previous novels, Trespassers Welcome Here (one of my favorite books) and The Diamond Lane (a sharp and entertaining send-up of Los Angeles), but explained to her that there was no market for a novel that dealt with the truth of motherhood. One editor said, “Mothers don’t want to read about being mothers. They want to escape from their lives. When they get a chance to read, they want to read about adventure in the Caribbean.”
However, the Motherhood Zeitgeist was looming, and Motherhood Made a Man Out of Me was one of the first books to define it. Though Amazon and Goodreads now have lists and shelves dedicated to Mommy-themed novels, Karen’s book doesn’t strictly belong in their ranks. Motherhood both defines and transcends the genre. It isn’t just a good “mommy” novel; it’s a good novel. An entertaining, funny, quotable, timeless read that you’ll be sharing with your friends, whether they have kids, or are thinking
