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    Famous Baby: A Novel
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    Famous Baby: A Novel
    Unavailable
    Famous Baby: A Novel
    Ebook245 pages3 hours

    Famous Baby: A Novel

    By Karen Rizzo

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    The daughter of a mommy blogger escapes fame—and gets even—in this “satirical exploration of the modern American family” (Publisher’s Weekly).
     
    Before there were Real Housewives and Tiger Moms, there was Ruth Sternberg, the hugely popular First Mother of Mommy Blogging—or as Ruth’s daughter, Abbie, prefers to call her, the First Lady of Cyber Exploitation.
     
    But eighteen-year-old Abbie has finally found her way out of the limelight by moving a solid 500 miles away from Ruth and her “maternal instincts.” When she hears that her ailing grandmother is moving in with Ruth, however, Abbie suspects that her mother has found a new subject to exploit. So Abbie does what any responsible granddaughter would do: she kidnaps Grandma to save her from the terrible fate of being blog fodder. Thus begins an “inventive, hysterical, and touching” battle of multigenerational wills (Christina Schwartz).
     
    “Karen Rizzo wraps a timeless drama about the love between mothers and daughters in a fresh, snappy package for the social media age.” —Christina Schwarz, author of The Edge of the Earth and Drowning Ruth
     
    “Famous Baby wisely (and funnily) explores motherhood, identity, and the hazards of parental over-sharing in the social media age.” —HelloGiggles
     
    “A refreshingly new twist on one of the oldest stories in the book: the mother-daughter love-hate relationship. . . . Funny, touching . . . would be a great choice for a book club.” —Bookconscious
     
    “Hilarious, moving, and wildly original, Famous Baby is a laugh-out-loud funny and poignant look at the modern family in these TMI times.” —Wendy Lawless, actress and author of Chanel Bonfire
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateJun 16, 2014
    ISBN9781938849312
    Unavailable
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    Reviews for Famous Baby

    3.5/5

    12 ratings14 reviews

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    • 1/5
      Pointless and irritating. Did not finish.
    • 4/5
      FAMOUS BABY by Karen Rizzo is a cautionary tale of mothers and daughters in the social media age. Ruth Sternberg is the "First Mother of Mommy Blogging," and Ruth's daughter, Abbie, feels victimized by her mother's candor with strangers. When given the opportunity, Abbie goes off the grid to reclaim her privacy, but reappears to rescue/kidnap her dying grandmother, Esther, when Ruth blogs about her plans to document Ruth's final days on her blog.Abbie and her grandmother have a wonderful relationship that is not diminished at all by Esther's health and memory issues. With the help of an interesting collection of neighbors, Abbie cares for her grandmother with love--and in privacy--while Ruth frantically searches for them.The story is told with alternating voices, primarily Abbie's and Ruth's. Abbie is an interesting and likeable eighteen-year-old, and Ruth is self-centered and terrified of being irrelevant. Both viewpoints are important to telling the full story (although Ruth is anything but likeable). However, my favorite chapter is the one in which we're privy to Esther's thoughts. This wise soul shares her take on the meaning of life, and she reveals some of her amazing secrets too.I really enjoyed FAMOUS BABY. It was a timely story told with humor, and it contained some good life lessons. Many thanks to the publisher and LibraryThing for a copy of the book in exchange for my unbiased review.
    • 2/5
      Mixed feeling on this one; it is very well written and you will find yourself compelled to finish if you start it. The story is told alternately by a daughter who finds herself estranged from her mother and "rescuing" her grandmother from the same sorts of abuse she feels she has endured for 21 years, that of a tell-all mother who blogs and shares every intimate detail of her life with faceless readers around the world. During 98% of this book I had absolutely no positive feelings toward her mother - the other storyteller in the book. What redeems the book for me is the final few chapters where the story of the mother and her baggage begins to humanize her in my eyes. Finally the book revolves around the last days of the grandmother, and this is why I give it a 2-star rating versus a higher rating - she ultimately chooses assisted suicide with the hapless help of her aged friends and an odd character who appears toward the end of the book. As I am totally against euthanasia or assisted suicide and it is portrayed as this lovely, sweet blessed end to her life, I'm downgrading my rating from what likely would have been a 4-star rating.
    • 3/5
      I loved the style of writing in this book, the story was easy to read and follow, I enjoyed the majority of the book. Now I get to the low star score, I was disgusted by the mother's language and her in general. After the half point I started skimming the mother and at some points skipping her. I truly think it would have been a better book without her (for the most part), her thoughts weren't even relative but truly shallow. I did enjoy the ending. I found this book drawn out for the obvious reasons BUT I did enjoy the authors story telling.
    • 4/5
      (Early Reviewer Book) From page one this book hits the ground running. It features smart-phone texts and blog lay-outs, as well as several narrators- one of which is the 'victim' of her mother's blog...where she has been cataloged by her mother's blog from day one (including a picture of her 'crowning' during birth. What a nightmare- and all I could think was 'why has technology brought narcissism to such a hurl inducing level, where people feel their every f***ing move needs to be documented in the manner of the first man walking on the moon? And much worse- Why is no one seemingly embarrassed by this? I swear, if I see another mommy-blogger from Brooklyn or plate of food on Instagram I'm going to go postal! But I digress. If you start this book, chances are you will finish it- and very shortly into it you will realize you're in the hands of a writer who knows what she's doing.
    • 4/5
      This is a good novel and would be a particularly good choice for book discussion groups because the insightful treatment of controversial aspects of social media and social change in general would make for a very lively discussion. Rizzo has written a good story, peopled with characters that are engaging, funny, sometimes mean and complicated and grappling with a complex array of questions associated with mother-daughter relationships, honesty, privacy in today's culture, end of life issues and a host of others. Very nicely done.
    • 5/5
      I just finished Famous Baby and before I say anything else, I have to say that I thoroughly loved it. The story is told from multiple perspectives and each voice is distinctive. Being both a mother and a daughter it is easy for to understand both characters, Ruth the slightly unhinged mother, and Abbie, the daughter longing for privacy. It raises the question of the oversharing that parents do on social media about their kids. Something I think about every time I scroll through my news feed. Great book. Highly recommended!
    • 4/5
      I received this book through the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program. This is one of those books where I liked the story, but hated the characters. But I think that's the point...maybe. I recommend this book, so long as you can put up with the crazy antics of the characters and understand the blogging world. I'm rating it 3.5 out of 5 stars.I'm certainly guilty of writing about my family on a blog without thought as to how they may feel about what I write, although I'd like to think that since my (only) readers are my mother and my (now ex-) husband, no one minds what I've written. This book made me reconsider the details I've shared so publicly.
    • 5/5
      Karen Rizzo ensconces this story within the framework of a blogging-obsessed mother in a modern, tell-all internet age. The first chapter starts with an exchange of text messages between two characters, and there are blog posts interspersed throughout the book. This might lull the reader into thinking they are embarking on a light or shallow read, but that is not so! I was amazed at the depths to which this novel quickly plunges. By the time Rizzo started exploring aging and death, my heart was aching with the reality of what I was reading. This book takes a brutally honest look at family relationships, secrets, reconciliation, and what it means to grow old but still feel young.
    • 3/5
      This book started out slow, got a bit interesting and then just stalled.I skimmed through the second half because I kept falling asleep while reading.It may have been my mood or the fact that I was sick while reading. I am passing it on to a friend who showed interest.
    • 4/5
      I was given this book as an Early Review in exchange for an honest review.I really enjoyed this book. I thought the daughter's character Abbie was interesting, I thought the mother's character Ruth was obnoxious and selfish and I loved the grandmother, as well as Abbie's elderly friends- who were hilarious and adorable. This was a fun book, with interesting emotions lived by these ladies, and it was well worth reading.
    • 4/5
      Karen Rizzo’s novel Famous Baby is a hilarious take on dysfunctional families and the so-called ‘Sandwich Generation’ -- those split between their children and their aging parents. Ruth is the Mother of Mommy Bloggers, having posted for years about the exploits of her only daughter, Abby. She is so successful, her writing has become a bestselling book. Now graduated from high school, the darling daughter has gone ‘off-grid’ depriving Ruth not only of her sole progeny but a large part of her literary inspiration. At least, she still has her Alzheimer stricken mother to move in. What a relief – the blog will carry on! -- until Abby spirits Grandma away from the nursing home to save her the indignity of having her last days splayed across the internet. Told from the alternating perspectives of Ruth and Abby, with screen shots of the ongoing blog thrown in. Fast-paced, funny and touching as well. Ours is a society in which the acceptable bounds of privacy are ever-changing and up for grabs. What some people look upon in horror as TMI (Too Much Information) is accepted by others as part of their voyeuristic due. This book put me in mind of a recent documentary on the life of humorist Erma Bombeck and the impact her newspaper column had on her family. Or, Ann Patchett who wrote posthumously about her dear friend Lucy Grealy only to be chastised by Grealy’s sister Suellen for a telling a story which wasn’t hers to tell. How far is too far? How do we even know how to draw the line anymore in our Twitter-Facebook-Reddit overshared world? Famous Baby may have you also pondering what constitutes the transgressive.
    • 3/5
      Good audiences for this book are stay-at-home-blogger-to-be-moms, high-schoolers entrenched in TMI (Too Much Information) activities, and of course victims of TMI needing ideas for contending with an absence of control over their own stories.The premise for “Famous Baby” is timely and clever. A profitable blogger mommy crafts a blog about her child and family and bleeds them for material so badly that they become estranged and like New Age zombies. Set in LA and Arizona, the story is told through two contrasting points of view belonging to Mother, Ruth, and daughter Abbie. The story is narrated by Abbie, disenfranchised from her mother’s blog and narcissistic betrayal of her privacy, and Ruth who hungers after her mother Esther’s final days of life for her blog. Abbie, a knowing victim, kidnaps her grandma and schemes to protect her last days and escort Esther to the afterlife. Minor male characters fill in the blanks which explain the character’s conflicts while moving the plot forward, but “Famous Baby” really covers mother/daughter torch-passing the good, bad, unmentioned and ugly.Overall entertaining, the ending was trite and predictable. While the characters were quirky and interesting almost David Lynch-like, they were fairly shallow and underdeveloped. Lastly, I didn’t care for the random side-bars and nods to Jim Carey’s, “Alrighty then!” It was distracting, disjunct and way too corny. Not sure if I’ll shelve this one or leave it on the table at the Spa...
    • 4/5
      Karen Rizzo's Famous Baby was a different story than I was expecting, but one I enjoyed very much. Abbie Sternberg grew up with her every moment, happy to horribly embarrassing and everything in between, shared with the world by her mother. As the First Mother of Mommy Blogging, Abbie's mother Ruth started blogging before most even knew what it was. While the blog did bring her notoriety and wealth, it drove her daughter away.Now eighteen and finally on her own, away from her mother's over-sharing, Abbie is finally free. Until, that is, she learns that, in her absence, her beloved grandmother is to become Ruth's new blogging focus.Kidnapping her grandmother is the only thing Abbie can think to do. Yet, it's not likely to make Ruth give up.Ruth and Abbie appear to be two very different people. Abbie wants nothing more than her privacy; to live her life without its every moment part of a post or interview. Her mother, meanwhile, seems to almost need to share every moment of her daughter's life. Their relationship is complicated and, as we get farther into the story, we see some examples of why.While Abbie's story is known - to the world and to readers - the more we learn of Ruth, the more there seems to be to her character. Whether it's that she's more oblivious and self-centered than thought at first glance, or whether there's something we (and Abbie) don't know about her, is the question.Famous Baby does a fantastic job dealing with not only Ruth and Abbie's relationship but also Abbie's relationship with her grandmother. Through Abbie's interactions with Esther, Esther's thoughts and comments about her daughter, Ruth, and the interactions of Abbie, her friends, and Esther we see more of all the characters. Rizzo did a great job creating characters who are not what you would expect them to be. Each has depth, a unique story and something that they contribute to the story of the other characters.Yes, this novel will make you think about possible over-sharing digitally, but more than that it will make you think about your relationships and both death and life. Though not a 'light' story, with serious issues, complex characters, and emotion, Rizzo's humor is both needed and enjoyed.