Ayelet Waldman
Ayelet Waldman
Ayelet Waldmanis an Israeli American novelist and essayist. She has written seven mystery novels in the series The Mommy-Track Mysteries and four other novels. She has also written autobiographical essays about motherhood. Waldman spent three years working as a federal public defender and her fiction draws on her experience as a lawyer...
NationalityIsraeli
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth11 December 1964
CountryIsrael
teenager average people
The thing about youthful offenders is that no one seems to care about them. Most people don't like adolescents - even the good ones can be snarky and unpleasant. Combine the antipathy we feel toward the average teenager with the fear inspired by youth violence, and you have a population that no one wants to deal with.
writing people tragedy
I'm sure there are people who survive tragedy without humor, but I've never met any of them. Nor would I be particularly interested in writing about them if I did meet them.
hurt kids people
I always tell my kids that as soon as you have a secret, something about you that you are ashamed to have others find out, you have given other people the power to hurt you by exposing you.
suicide people suffering
I learned that I suffered from bipolar II disorder, a less serious variant of bipolar I, which was once known as manic depression. The information was naturally frightening; up to 1 in 5 people with bipolar disorder will commit suicide, and rates may even be higher for those suffering from bipolar II.
feeling openly people writes
Usually I try not to read that stuff. For someone who writes openly about her life, I have the thinnest skin. I don't like feeling that people don't like me. It makes me very upset.
approach fact fear matter mistake people proclaim raises sight simply tolerate
Another parent's different approach raises the possibility that you've made a mistake with your child. We simply can't tolerate that because we fear that any mistake, no matter how minor, could have devastating consequences. So we proclaim the superiority of our own choices. We've lost sight of the fact that people have preferences.
assume gay intimate maintain men people relationships shop straight
How many straight men maintain inappropriately intimate relationships with their mothers? How many shop with them? I want a gay son. People laugh, but they assume I'm kidding. I'm not.
consumes maternal subject written
I've always written about maternal ambivalence. It's the subject that consumes me.
books-and-reading next till wait
If they want to be someone who is not loathsome, they'll have to wait till the next book.
author choosing loves mommy mystery track
No author loves the idea of not choosing his or her characters' names, ... Mommy Track Mystery.
california diego either freshman san southern
They can be either a freshman at UC San Diego with one too many piercings or a far-too-perfect Southern California mother.
beautiful becoming ends gilded good life madame perfect seems sort
It's a good life in this sort of Madame Bovary way. It's beautiful and perfect and seems to be just what you want but ends up becoming a gilded cage.
mother children faithful
By presenting a faithful and honest record of my experience as a mother, I hope to show both my readers and my children how truth can redeem even what you fear might be the gravest of sins.
kids faces sometimes
I've sometimes thought that it's only by recalling that desperate devotion my kids once felt for me that I can maintain my own desperate devotion in the face of their adolescent sneering.