Accidentally on Purpose: A One-Night Stand, My Unplanned Parenthood, and Loving the Best Mistake...

Accidentally on Purpose: A One-Night Stand, My Unplanned Parenthood, and Loving the Best Mistake I Ever Made | Mary F. Pols | a voice and a story of our generation

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Accidentally on Pu...

	Accidentally on Purpose: A One-Night Stand, My Unplanned Parenthood, and Loving the Best Mistake I Ever Made Mary F. Pols Ecco, 2008 - 288 pages average customer review:based on 17 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

At thirty-nine, movie critic Mary Pols knew she wanted to have a baby. But never?not in a million years?on her own. To take on the physical, emotional, and financial challenges of motherhood without a perfect soul mate/husband would be absurd, kind of like not bothering to use a condom during a one-night stand with an adorable but jobless guy ten years her junior.

Pols spends the ensuing weeks despairing over everything, from the financial nightmare of single motherhood to the end of her hopes for a traditional life. Not the least of her worries is finding the right way to drop the bombshell on loved ones, including her five siblings and eighty-four-year-old father, who has a German temper and an Irish Catholic attitude toward babies out of wedlock. Yet faced with the frightening, lonely truth that this might be her only chance at motherhood, she plunges ahead with the pregnancy and an Odd Couple version of a co-parenting relationship that looks like one more disaster in a long line of romantic disappointments. But even as she tries to give her son’s young father a radical makeover, she realizes that his devotion and love for their child matters more than his spotty résumé or his inability to remember to put oil in the car. With humor, insight, and compelling honesty, Pols reveals what it means to compromise in the name of love and to find joy in an accidental life, suddenly brimming with purpose.

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A Fantastic Find of a Book

I happened across this book in the library and picked it up because the title sounded interesting. I am a habitual re-reader of books I love and am harsh on starting new books due to limited time. That being said, I found Accidentally on Purpose to be a book I couldn't put down. I felt like the author was talking to me as one of my friends might talk to me telling me a story of what had happened to her. This is a wonderful story of two normal, imperfect people doing the right thing in their own way. I found the story of Matt and Mary sticking it out with each other and working through their own issues to meet their goal of parenting Dolan to be really inspiring. I'm making an effort to tell everyone I know to read the book- it's such a delight to find such a good book purely by chance. Hope to see more work by the author in the future.

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a voice and a story of our generation

Mary's story, unique in so many ways, is also the story of our generation: the challenges that we face in our search for love and companionship, challenges seemingly quite different from those of our parents' generation. Her story has a universality about it, with many scenes early in the book that will strike a chord with 30-something and 40-something readers. And at the same time the details with which her story unfolds are soley her own: from her connection with places, in particular with the coast of Maine, a muse ripe for weaving into a story of life's obstacles, of life's beauty, and ultimately of an acceptance of both; to her own misgivings about her unusual circumstances under which she has brought a wonderful child into this world. Myself, not normally a devouring reader unless a book be written in no-nonsense language, and its story compelling, finished this one in only a handful of subway commute-rides. It's the kind of story one wants to share with others. When I finished it I promptly gave it to a young woman sitting nearby me on the train, who I had noticed had been reading the book-cover's provocative subtitle. I hope the book is now making the rounds of New York City and to places beyond, the way it should be.

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I laughed, I cried and I loved this book

This is one of the few times that I have read a book based on a family I know. I grew up around the corner from the Pols and was friends/contemporaries of the older group of the six children. I do not know Mary but I certainly understand the family dynamic.
I read this book in one day-I lauughed and I cried. I was angry with her for her lack of understandingin some situations and I was proud of her for her understanding in other ways.
This is a painfully real, honest memoir that tells a sometimes hard story but Mary reveals so much of her soul it is hard to not be entranced and engaged. How brave to be so brutally honest about one's shortcomings and fears.
She paints a sometimes unattractive picture of the baby's father but I do understand that she was writing about her feelings-she would not tell you that she was always fair or politically correct-it just is what it is. Her son may read the book and think she was hard on his father but I doubt that. I think that he will see the truth of his mother's struggle in bringing him into the world and how both his parents fought to make him safe and happy. It was hard and very real-I'm glad she told the story.

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A very entertaining memoir

Mary Pols entered motherhood by the backdoor - at the age of forty, a one-night stand with a man ten years her junior left her pregnant. At times both hysterically funny and deeply moving, Pols writes wryly about the challenges of parenting not only her newborn son, but also his chronically immature father. From the struggles of becoming a mother to the heartbreak of losing her elderly parents, Pols has written an engaging and memorable memoir.

With reservations...

Though I really enjoyed this book for a variety of reasons, it concerns me that Pols was so ruthless and revealing about her relationship with her son's father. Although she certainly does not paint herself as the perfect mate or parent, she is not gracious about her son's father's (perceived) failings. I just thought it brutal, and more than a little indecorous to go into such detail about their sexual behavior and how he doesn't measure up in so many ways. How unkind a picture to bequeath her son! I think the rationale that it is for "art's sake" is thin, and symptomatic of our boundry-less popular culture. Sure, Pols is honest about her own warts, but that doesn't mitigate the cruel overexposure she has subjected her son and his father to.

That said, it is often funny and definitely a page-turner.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4

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