How to Party with an Infant (Hemmings)

How to Party with an Infant 
Kaui Hart Hemmings, 2016
Simon & Schuster
240 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781501100796


Summary
A hilarious and charming story about a quirky single mom in San Francisco who tiptoes through the minefields of the "Mommy Wars" and manages to find friendship and love.

When Mele Bart told her boyfriend Bobby she was pregnant with his child, he stunned her with an announcement of his own: he was engaged to someone else.

Fast forward two years, Mele’s daughter is a toddler, and Bobby and his fiancée want Ellie to be the flower girl at their wedding. Mele, who also has agreed to attend the nuptials, knows she can’t continue obsessing about Bobby and his cheese making, Napa-residing, fiancee.

She needs something to do. So she answers a questionnaire provided by the San Francisco Mommy Club in elaborate and shocking detail and decides to enter their cookbook writing contest. Even though she joined the group out of desperation, Mele has found her people: Annie, Barrett, Georgia, and Henry (a stay-at-home dad). As the wedding date approaches, Mele uses her friends’ stories to inspire recipes and find comfort, both.

How to Party with an Infant is a hilarious and poignant novel from Kaui Hart Hemmings, who has an uncanny ability to make disastrous romances and tragic circumstances not only relatable and funny, but unforgettable. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—1975
• Where—Hawaii, USA
• Education—B.A., Colordo College; Sarah Lawrence
• Currently—lives in San Fransisco, California


Kaui Hart was born and raised in Hawaii. She attended Colorado College, earning a B.A., and later, Sarah Lawrence College. She was also awarded a Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University.

Hemmings first novel, The Descendants, released in 2007, was an expanded version of a story from her 2005 collection, House of Thieves. The novel became a New York Times bestseller, was published in twenty-two other countries and adapted in 2011 as an Oscar-winning film, starring George Clooney.

Her second novel, Possibilities came out in 2014. Her third, the young adult novel Juniors, was published in 2015 and her fourth (adult) novel, How to Party With an Infant, in 2016. Hemmings lives in San Francisco, California. (Adapted from the publisher.)

Book Reviews
How to Party with an Infant…rejoices in irresistibly dry wit…. Hemmings perfectly captures modern parenthood among the privileged and, with moments of concise poignancy, the silent shames of motherhood: envy, boredom, laziness and guilt…. The book takes a few stabs at easy targets…. But the pleasures of Hemmings's levity and wisdom more than sustain the reader. We cheer for her warm, self-deprecating characters and hope they continue to laugh together instead of crying alone.
Heidi Pitlor - New York Times Book Review


Side-splittingly snark...the novel's characters and settings are rich and resonant... [A] smart, funny send-up of modern motherhood, San Francisco-style.
San Francisco Chronicle


The wit is often diabolical—which is to say, delicious—in Kaui Hart Hemmings’ new novel...[is a] sly takedown of 21st-century parenting.... Underneath this wicked wit, though, is a warm heart.
Seattle Times


It’s not often a reviewer can say that there is absolutely nothing wrong with a book; that a novel is standalone perfection and needs no tweaks or editing. How to Party with an Infant is one of those rare exceptions...incredibly well written and thought out.... Best of all: it’s funny! Actually, incredibly, tremendously funny! This book will surely put a smile on readers’ faces from start to finish...a powerful tale sure to make readers’ hearts swell while cracking the biggest grin, i.e. the best kind of story.
Portland Book Reivew


The sarcastic, irreverent voice we loved in The Descendants is back in Kaui Hart Hemmings' new novel...a funny, incisive tour de force that takes on the pretensions and foibles of these haute-bourgeois, narcissistic urbanites...Joyful and sexy.
Honolulu Star-Advertiser


Mommyhood gets hilariously tricky in this novel from the author of The Descendents (A Cosmo Reads pick).
Cosmopolitan


Meet Mele, a young single mom, a good cook, and an even better eavesdropper. She enters a San Francisco mommy club’s cookbook contest and makes recipes based on her cohort’s humiliating confessions in this charmer from the author of The Descendents.
Marie Claire


In Kaui Hart Hemmings' cheeky yet poignant novel, Mele attempts to navigate parenthood as a single mom. She finds comfort while writing a cookbook filled with recipes inspired by tales of her friends' own parenting disasters (Hot Summer Stories pick).
Us Weekly


In her funny and sensitive fourth novel, Hemmings explores the intersection of personhood and parenthood.... [A] layered narrative that is both ruthless and empathetic, satirical and sincere.
Publishers Weekly


Hemmings effectively captures the judgmental, overly prescribed nature of today's parenting assumptions. [P]arents will relate, while those who are not will feel relieved. The book's format as a questionnaire accompanying Mele's cookbook application is somewhat artificial but doesn't interfere too much with the storytelling. —Christine DeZelar-Tiedman, Univ. of Minnesota Libs., Minneapolis
Library Journal


This is satire with soul. Hemmings skewers the cottage industries that helicopter motherhood has fostered, while plaintively celebrating the basic joys and frustrations all parents experience. Whip smart, sharp witted, and downright brave, Hemmings’ novel of modern parenting is sleek, sly, and sublime.
Booklist


[A] potato-chip-thin comedy about a single mother in San Francisco hoping to win a cookbook competition.... From the plucky heroine whose life is not very hard to the easy potshots at stereotypical monster-moms, this novel is so contrived it's hard to believe it comes from the same author as the [2007] emotionally wrenching The Descendents.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
1. Why does Mele decide to enter the cookbook competition in the first place? What does she mean when she says, "It’s comforting to be able to explain yourself, or to be asked anything at all"? In what ways do the questionnaire and the cookbook become Mele’s diary? How do you think Mele would feel actually to win the competition? Is this even her goal?

2. What do you think about the unconventional format of the novel, from Mele’s revealing first-person responses to the questionnaire and her friends’ stories to the Greek-chorus style emails from the SFMC listserv interjected throughout? How does this creative structure contribute to your understanding of the plot and characters of the novel?

3. Talk about the concepts of "the mommy wars" and "helicopter parenting," and how they come to play out in this novel. Have you ever found yourself the victim of judgment over choices you have made, whether pertaining to parenting or otherwise? How does the author satirize modern parenting in San Francisco?

4. Discuss the crucial role that class plays in the novel; think about specific scenes such as Mele’s first SFMC playgroup with the rich mommies, Annie’s obsession with Tabor Boyard, and Henry’s embarrassment over his friends’ reaction to his home. How and why do certain characters feel defined by and defensive about their wealth (or lack thereof)? Why does social class become such a key part of the relationships and interactions in the novel?

5. The core of the novel is Mele—the careful observer and frustrated writer—listening to the wide-ranging stories of her friends and reimagining their varied experiences as recipes. Of all the stories she hears, whose did you relate to the most and why? Which character would you like to hear more stories from? (And which meal would you most like to eat?)

6. Georgia tells Mele about the night she bailed Chris out of jail and ends up spinning a web of lies for her teenage son—that she was a model, a cocaine addict, and a yogi in India. Why does Georgia lie to her son? What does she stand to gain from the story she tells him? How does her tall tale impact her relationship with her son in the short term, and what does their one unplanned day—when "she’s not on a playground bench staring into space, when she’s not at home watching other people on television making love"—do for Georgia?

7. Why doesn’t Mele confess that she’s taken the Hermes belt from the charity giveaway pile at the Betts’s house? What does the belt symbolize and why does Mele ultimately leave it on the curb?

8. While Annie and Mele have only very young children, Henry, Georgia, and Barrett all have tween and teenage children in addition to their younger children. How do each of these characters’ stories highlight the increasingly complex challenges facing parents of teenagers? What fears about raising children to adulthood do each of these parents reveal in their stories? What can Mele learn about raising Ellie from her friends’ (often cautionary) tales?

9. Despite the fact that Henry’s wife cheats on him and Annie’s husband is constantly traveling for work, Mele is the only one of her friends who is definitely single. What challenges and judgments does Mele face as a single mother? Georgia says that she envies Mele and that she is "free." Do you think that Mele is indeed free, or is it more complicated than that?

10. "Ellie wasn’t a baby anymore, and I was still reacting versus living." How does becoming a mother change Mele? What does she miss about her life before Ellie, and how does she set out to change her approach to her life over the course of the novel? Do you think that she successfully reaches a place where she is in fact living versus reacting? If you are a parent, can you relate to Mele’s sentiment?

11. Discuss how Mele and Bobby’s relationship changes and develops over the course of the novel. Do you think that Mele should ask more of Bobby as a father to Ellie? Why does she decide to attend the wedding? What do you think the future holds for her, Bobby, and the cheesemaker wife?

12. Were you surprised by the end of the novel? What do you think happens next with Mele and Henry?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)

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