The Mongoose Diaries: Excerpts from a mother's first year
Erin Noteboom
May 2007
248 pages | ISBN 978-1-894987-15-8
"The truth is I remember only fragments."
With these words, award-winning poet Erin Noteboom starts the story of her daughter Vivian's birth. In vivid and graceful prose, Noteboom shares jewel-like fragments of her first year as a mother. A year that does not start with a birth, but with the death of her sister and contains not only first words, but the end of remission for a painful medical condition.
Whether discussing her libido, which may be lost under the laundry, or how the sea stripped even the rings from her sister's fingers, The Mongoose Diaries is a courageous, funny and captivating work.
Articles
The Final Dash: A List of Books for all the Types on Your List (Kerry Clare, 49th Shelf, 17/12/2014)
“[An] extraordinary and nuanced memoir… It's a quick, engaging and beautiful read, plus babies like the funny face on the cover, and it's designed to conveniently slip inside a diaper bag! Smart.”
Reviews
"The Mongoose Diaries by Erin Noteboom" (Kerry Clare, Pickle Me This, 21/09/2014)
“It’s a beautiful, unsentimental and complicated depiction of life with a new baby, all the awful bound up with a pummelling love that is often more pummel than love.”
Mongoose Diaries (Lesley, Lesley's Book Nook, 11/28/2009)
“Whether discussing her libido, which may be lost under the laundry, or how the sea stripped even the rings from her sister's fingers, The Mongoose Diaries is a courageous, funny and captivating work.”
Prairie Fire Review of Books (Andrea Belcham, Prairie Fire, 7/2/2008)
“As is crucial to the life-writing that seeks to win the trust of its audience, Noteboom's account balances self-confidence with self-doubt, and joys alongside disappointments.”
About the Author
Erin Noteboom comes from the American prairies. From a childhood steeped in family, science and writing, Erin first choose science when the two options of science or poetry split apart. She collected a physics degree, worked at the CERN accelerator in Geneva, and took the world’s first Polaroid of Cherenkov ring. After a brain tumour rearranged her priorities Erin went back to poetry, and immigrated to Canada in 1997. She has been published widely in literary magazines since then, winning the CBC Literary Award in 2001, the 2004 KW [Kitchener Waterloo] Arts Award, and Acorn/Plantos Award for Peoples poetry in 2004. She is the poetry editor for the New Quarterly, runs writing workshops in Kitchener, Ontario, and is active in the literary community.
Other Titles by this Author
Seal up the thunder (2005)
