Stay-at-Work Mom

May 1, 2019
A producer and comedy writer for 2 Broke Girls and The King of Queens, among other programs, brings her humor to the homefront with these essays about her childhood and raising her own children. Given Astrof's extensive background in comedy, readers will expect humor throughout, and the author delivers with one punchline after another. The author clearly loves her children, but she prefers to leave the details of raising them to her husband. She shares a wide, wacky variety of stories: how she avoids returning home until she knows her kids are safely tucked in bed, how she handled a weekend at Great Wolf Lodge, an indoor water park where signs warned swimmers not to enter the pool with "active" diarrhea ("I could only speculate as to what 'active' meant to the legal team...but mostly, I was grateful that I wouldn't have to so much as dip a toe in that shit river"), how she reacted when her stash of candy dissolved while on vacation in Mexico; why she is convinced she'll be murdered while on a work-related weekend with fellow writers; why a "fun" trip to the mall with her kids is anything but; and how an idyllic vacation in Hawaii turned into a fiasco thanks to one errant text message. Underneath the comedy, however, are details about the author's difficult childhood living with verbally abusive parents who fought over her custody. She also grew up with weight and self-esteem issues and still has trouble with both concerns as an adult. The juxtaposition between the absurdity and the reality of Astrof's life creates a mostly effective balance, which pushes this book beyond the slapstick visible at the surface and into a more reflective realm. Droll wit and profundity swirl together in a revealing memoir from a successful comedy writer.

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May 13, 2019
Astrof, a sitcom writer and producer, offers a hilarious and heartfelt essay collection about, among other topics, her life as a Los Angeles “stay-at-work” mother with a demanding schedule and a fear so great of the bedtime hour that she sometimes lingers in her car until her husband has put their two children to sleep. In the sidesplitting opening essay, Astrof describes taking her seven- and nine-year-olds to a water park one weekend, while having no intention of going in the water herself. Readers will laugh out loud as she relents and dons a child’s extra-extra-large bathing suit—albeit backwards. There are heartbreaking pieces as well—one describes the frightening few weeks when, after her parents’ divorce, her unstable mother absconded with six-year-old Astrof (and, almost equally painfully, declined to abduct her brother). Nor was life with Astrof’s father easy, as he sent her to Camp Shane (aka “Camp Shame”) to lose weight. Though Astrof’s collection is often trenchant in its look at her own difficult childhood, it is also permeated with a sense of love for her kids, and is sure to resonate deeply with other parents. Kristyn Keene, ICM.

June 1, 2019
Astrof is not just a working mom, she is a stay-at-work mom. The kind of mother who loves her job, is a little bit afraid of her children, and has definitely, 100 percent, never let them have illegal turtles from Chinatown because she feels guilty that she sent them there with the nanny instead of taking them herself. Successful comedy writer and television producer Astrof has put together a forthright, laugh-out-loud collection of essays that lets you in on a little of what makes her shows like 2 Broke Girls or The King of Queens so much fun. She knows her flaws well and mines them for comedy gold. That time she almost ruined a friendship via text? Check. All the trips to fat camp? Check. Hilarious and, of course, as well written as any good sitcom episode, Don't Wait Up is a great read for all the moms who also aren't quite sure what to make of motherhood, and for anyone else who likes a laugh.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)