In her descriptions of sex, as in so much else, Moran is fearless. Her honesty might make you gasp. It will certainly make you laugh out loud. But it will also make you think. Moran has thought deeply about what makes for good sex, what keeps a marriage alive, how to be a good parent and friend, and how to keep the whole exhausting show on the road without going mad, and almost every chapter is packed with insights that feel like revelations ... She’s brilliant on the physical stuff ... She’s also brilliant on the nuances of friendships, relationships and parenting ... And it’s heartbreaking. Moran writes with such warmth and searing honesty that she can yank you from laughter to tears on the same page ... This book is a hilarious memoir, a passionate polemic and a moving manifesto on how to be a decent person and try, in the face of countless stresses, to live a full, open-hearted, joyous life.
It's...hard to overstate how pleasurable it is to spend time in Moran’s company: More Than a Woman is funny, life-affirming and wise. Few can match her for snorts per page or her canny knack for describing common yet unnamed experiences ... The chapters on parenting are the ones that rubble you. Moran’s account of her daughter’s eating disorder is chilling, told with an honesty that makes your heart crack with her. It brings weight to an otherwise effervescent book. Moran’s daughter told her she could write about it in the hope it might help others; I am sure it will ... Moran proves herself, once more, a sage guide in the joys, as well as the difficult bits, of being a woman – of being a partner, mother, friend and feminist.
Part memoir, part manifesto, it tackles such thorny issues as anal sex, smear tests, hangovers, teenagers, ageing parents, careers, the tyranny of the to-do list, big bums and the moment when your entire wardrobe seems to turn against you ... Those who read her newspaper columns will know that Moran – who is also a screenwriter and novelist – is great at the observational stuff. Elaborate metaphors abound ... She is also very funny, locating the absurd in everyday situations ... Threaded through the narrative is Moran’s commonsense feminism, underpinned by the principle that if men aren’t having to put up with this crap, then neither should we ... She has seen first-hand the catastrophically damaging effects of this demand for perfection through her own Instagram-loving children; indeed, the parts about raising teenagers provide the book’s real emotional punch ... We see Moran at her most serious and embattled, at sea in the face of illness and a child that she can’t reach.
this is really a book about love. It’s about love as the unacknowledged force driving the unpaid and indispensable work of women; and it’s about, specifically, Moran’s love for her daughter Nancy (a pseudonym), whose mental health struggles emerge as the heart of this book ... Moran’s other main subject, besides love, is herself, which means the 'everywoman' pose is sometimes a strain ... [Her] honesty is at its fiercest in the sections about Nancy. Here Moran is at her best, all swooping rhythm and perfectly apt, gorgeously unexpected imagery ... She captures all the horror and hope of being an onlooker to your child’s breakdown, and I could have read a whole book on the agonies of teenage girlhood ... The tone for the most part, though, is light. Moran is more humourist than polemicist, and there are some drop-dead funny lines here ...Where More Than a Woman stumbles is in trying to be more than it can feasibly manage: a memoir, a feminist analysis, a call to arms — while being funny. But then, isn’t the middle-aged woman’s ultimate predicament that she’s trying to do too many things at once?
... it’s in her descriptions of parenting that Moran is at her rawest and most vulnerable, as she emphasizes how hard it is to realize we can’t save others (we can hardly keep ourselves afloat, after all) while also revealing that it’s enough to realize we need to make changes when (not if) we fail ... Moran brings readers along during her fallible and human days, showing how we can all relate to feelings of satisfaction and dissatisfaction. A must-read.
British author Moran...takes on the fraught topic of being a modern woman in this realistic, sometimes funny, and occasionally heartbreaking essay collection. With an empathetic and supportive tone, Moran covers a variety of subjects, including housework, married sex, aging, body acceptance, parenting teenagers, and overcoming rough spots in marriage (even when that means leaving). While some of Moran’s essays are downright funny...many others focus on tough topics ... Readers will find comfort and humor in Moran’s heartfelt and deeply honest musings
