Brett Paesel

Moms and Dads are rallying around their 10-year old sons in the Beverly Hills youth soccer league. There is an over-the-top friendly coach and an enthusiastic team mom. There is an assistant coach, a divorced mom who regrets the divorce, a divorced copy with the wife resentful over her husband leaving her for the nanny, a mom who strikes her child because she is so unhappy, and a young paid kicking coach that several of the moms lust after. The team parents communicate primarily by email after each game, some overly enthusiastic and effusive after the games, while others email after drinking too much.
While some of this is humorous, much of it is a commentary on how parents place too much emphasis on the youth leagues, and competitiveness at a young age, how dissatisfied some people are in their marriages - and instead of talking to their spouse, they go elsewhere for satisfaction. It examines how children feel isolated and alone, and how parents reveal their feelings inappropriately in front of their children without understanding how young the children are to deal with these issues. It deals with anger, depression, affairs, job loss, secrets, and autism.
I enjoyed this novel, and will probably read more by this author.
#EverythingIsJustFine #BrettPaesel… (more)

Paesel is an actor who lives in LA. She's about my age, and the book is billed as a memoir. I have to read books like this, it's a compulsion. On the surface the author and I have only age and having bred in common. I kept feeling that way through the first half of the book, and admit to rolling my eyes more than once. Somehow though, Paesel's vulnerability started to win me over, and by the last chapter, in which I shared her feelings exactly, I was right in her corner. I applaud any mother who strikes out against the cookie-cutter mold we are pressed into by default and by assumption, and if Paesel's rebellion is not my own, we are still somehow akin.… (more)