Published on 02/13/2010

For Maggie Lamond Simone, sarcasm has always been a means of survival, and words, her weapon of choice. Her second-grade teacher worried about a child so flippant at such a tender age. Twenty years later, as a police officer escorted a drunk Simone away from the car she had just wrecked, she asked him to drop her not at home but at the bar where her friends waited. He didn’t laugh. Simone quit drinking the next day. When she finally came up for air a few years later, she was afraid that she wouldn’t be funny without the alcohol. But she had a startling revelation. She wasn’t funny in the first place. The world was. And she started writing about it. Fifteen years and countless words later, "From Beer to Maternity" addresses dating, marriage, pregnancy, motherhood and menopause with a caustic wit and a healthy disrespect for perfection.

From Beer to Maternity by Maggie Lamond Simone: Book Review

Brodman Publishing (2009)
ISBN 9780615289922
Reviewed by Carol Hoyer, PhD, for Reader Views (01/10)

The author gives readers laughter, sarcasm and humor in this incredibly funny but true book. She admits that she writes today the way she wrote in college; the only difference she wasn’t drunk this time.

Ms. Simone writes what most of us, especially women, think but dare not speak out loud. She addresses topics such as: why women are jealous of each other; how men think; if one is single they are out to find Mr. Right; and being an older mother.

One of my favorite chapters was entitled “Cooties” and deals with how to tell if your date is bored, and how dating companies will check out a potential date by looking at their resume, education, credit scores, and criminal records. She tells us that we all have made stupid mistakes in our life, but do you really need all that information to consider dating someone?

Her chapter titled “Tick Tock” is one that many of us have been through. When our mother keeps pestering us as to when she is ever going to have grandchildren. Ms. Simone relates that raising children is like raising dogs - you feed them, water them and talk to them in baby talk.

Readers will find that the author is saying things we have always wanted to say or question. One will laugh, cry and make notes on witty things to say the next time one of these topics come up. “From Beer to Maternity” by Maggie Lamond Simone was such a funny read- once you start you can’t put it down till you reach the last page and then you want more.