Mad Cows

This book starts out so funny. Then the turns that this woman's life take really turn shocking. It was hard for me to read, but the wit was so refreshing I had to keep reading, just to get more of it. Kathy Lette definitely enjoys her dark side. I think most young women writers coming out today are totally borrowing from Kathy. From plot twists to sarcastic commentary, you can find everything in one of her books years before the others. I would've given it 5 stars, but it does plod at times and at a certain point, she just throws out one-liners sentence after sentence that are so clever, but need more space to be appreciated. Also, she quotes the prequel to this one - Foetal Attraction - too much. I know she wants to make sure everyone gets to hear her brilliant wit, but she should trust that they will read the other books if they like her. Other than these really minor points, it's brilliant.

This is a very funny and witty and easy to read book. Kathy is not the new writing genius of the nineties and doesn't seem to care. That's it.

Kathy Lette is Australia's funniest comedian. This hilarious sequel to Foetal Attaction, sees Lette at her wittiest and biting.What a woman.

I read this book whilst in the dreary United Kingdom, and at times felt a bit like the unfortunate Maddy. As an Aussie brought up in America, I may have been even more foriegn than our brave heroine Madeline, yet I passionatley identifeied with her predicaments. Although I was never inclined to spend time in England's correctional facilities, I was prone to spend time with English men who, on the basis of their lack of morals and responsibility, SHOULD have spent time in said correctional facilities. Kathy Lette is outrageous... she has a tendency to blow things way out of proportion, making Maddy's escapades all the more believable. After all, nothing is more outrageous than real life, and fiction often fails to capture the absurd reality that most people live. Lette has accomplished a great feat in that I felt all of Maddy's pain, frustration and spunk, and when reading this book on the bloody tube in the mornings on the way to a stifling job in London (thank GOD I got out of that city), I sometimes forgot who I was and identified more with Maddy. I wanted to sprint from the tube at King's Cross and just disappear into the concrete and coal-stained jungle of Cockney land. I was elated at Maddy's escape from London.. only my own escape topped it

As my own 1-1/2 year old son ran amock and made a shambles of several rooms, I burned through this book about the misadventures of Maddy, her baby son Jack, and an assortment of other vivid characters. Lette's crisp, witty writing tells a story of new motherhood with just enough exaggeration to make it a great escape from genuine new motherhood. This is not to say that only we stroller-pushers will love it...but there's definitely a lot more vigorous nodding and sighing going on when the reader can empathize with Maddy's breastfeeding woes, for example. (Although I doubt many of us ever had to re-interpret lactation etiquette for a stay in a women's lockup.) Maddy's ambivalence about motherhood is no laughing matter, though; it's an all-too-true portrayal, albeit in an absurdish context, of the difficult transition from carefree independence to the duty-laden role of a primary-caretaker parent. Maddy's dealings with her baby's father, the vain midlifer Alex, are filled with the pain of betrayal and the ache of leftover lust, but Lette's made Maddy enough of a resilient smartass to keep us laughing and rooting for her. I never doubted Maddy would get what she wanted. It was the getting-there I loved most