Book Review: Momzillas, A Hilarious Summer Beach Read for Moms

“A Momzilla is the ultimate nightmarish Type A competitive parent. Not content with sending their child to nursery, they employ top university child psychiatrists to ‘ace’ their nursery school interviews.” A lot has been said about the mothers of Manhattan’s super-chic Upper East Side. These power-moms are enormously wealthy, highly educated, and extremely competitive, and they use their time, energy, and endless resources into their child rearing. Their children from the day they are born become pawns in a game where the success of the parent is measured in the precocious achievements of their children, their packed activity schedules, and their elite private-nursery school pedigrees.

In Jill Kargman’s novel Momzillas, Hannah Allen moves to this very neighborhood with her investment banker husband and their two-year-old daughter, Violet. It is here where she is inundated by some of her not-so-well-intentioned new friends, the wives of her husband’s co-workers, and her overbearing, socially conscious mother-in-law. She is coached on matters from where to buy the must-have $300 baby dress to how to get into the only pre-pre-preschool that counts.

Momzillas is fun and entertaining for any mom who doesn’t have time to sit and read a serious suspense novel, but a thought-provoking book while baby is napping in the nursery. Read it and you’ll wonder how much of the snobbery in the upper crust of society is true to life when it comes to children and raising them.

She effortlessly tromps through the Big Apple’s Upper East Side with the witty humor Kargman fans will recognize from her previous works (The Right Address ; Wolves in Chic Clothing), taking no prisoners as she colorfully lambasts the Momzillas who inhabit the place – all the while juxtaposing these type-A-gone-bezerk women with her title character Hannah, the gal who just wants to knock the mom thing down a pace or two, but feels her desire to do so might be a reflection of her unworthiness as a mom. While the NYC location is always key to Kargman’s books, one need not know NYC to relate – as we all know – Momzillas exist everywhere. Every mom can relate – not only with the annoyance of the Momzilla, but also with the frighteningly easy downslope we must strive to avoid before becoming one ourselves.

Popularity: 1% [?]