Attack of the Fifty-Foot Hormones
If you’re growing a new human in your womb, you’ve probably noticed that pregnancy is one hell of an emotional roller coaster ride. One moment you’re elated – earth mother incorporated. The next you’re inconsolably weepy or spouse-killingly furious or crippled by an anxiety attack no amount of ice-cream inhalation will ease. On top of all this, you’re sounding like a one-woman brass band on account of all the uncontrollable pregnancy flatulence. This sanity-boosting survival guide is the result of hundreds of interviews with sympathetic professionals and pregnant chicks generous enough to reveal how they stayed sunny-side up despite spending nine months in tracky daks the size of North Korea. There are also plenty of practical tips for how to cope if:
- You don’t glow so much as sweat a lot, and become freakishly hairy and veiny;
- Your pregnant bum is the size of a campervan’s and your cankles rival those of Babar the elephant’s;
- You’re so overwhelmed by everything you’re supposed to do and not do that you’ve spent the past week lying in the foetal position eating nothing but folic acid-less Bounty Bars;
- You think every twinge or kick is a sign of miscarriage or triffid-strength mutation;
- You’re so vague you just microwaved your mobile phone and forgot the removing-your-undies stage of going to the loo;
- You’ll commit murder if one more pregnancy book or web site assumes your partner is a spouse, a he or actually exists;
- Your idea of pregnancy exercise is shuddering violently at the thought of one day introducing a baby’s head to your precious vagina; and
- Everyone keeps cackling witchily while saying you’ll never sleep, shag or have a life ever again.
Attack of the Fifty-Foot Hormones also includes Emma Tom’s pregnancy diary which reveals what happened after she was unexpectedly diagnosed with an SLF (which turned out to be ridiculous medical jargon for a Single Live Foetus). Published by HarperCollins in July,
2009.
To read reviews click HERE. To see and/or hear ET yakkin’ about Attack of the Fifty-Foot Hormones, click HERE. And here, by popular demand (oh, OK, one email), are printoutable versions of the book’s five User Guides…
PREGNANT CHICK USER GUIDE #1: What NOT To Say To A Chick Who Is Trying To Get Pregnant But Who Hasn’t Had Any Luck Yet
PREGNANT CHICK USER GUIDE #3: Partners — What You Can Do To Help (Or At Least Not Further Infuriate) The Large, Pregnant Lady In Your Life
PREGNANT CHICK USER GUIDE #4: The Big D
PREGNANT CHICK USER GUIDE #5: Birth Etiquette For Support Folk
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Bali: Paradise Lost?
Window burning, opium abuse, slave trading, royal live rhinoceros rituals…. Bali’s history is a fascinating place to visit but you wouldn’t want to live there. Now, in the 21st century, boobs and bikinis face off with Indonesian shariah law on an island which remains a mass of quirky contradictions. In this book, you’ll watch a roadside cremation, dine on “beep sate” and “prog’s legs”, meet the pirate DVD trader from Perth who emerges from the Balinese mountains like Marlon Brando from Apocalypse Now, discover what the Indonesian censors have done with Brokeback Mountain, meet prisoners on death row in Kerobokan Prison and enjoy a sunset campari at an upmarket bar which – since the 2002 and 2005 Bali bombings – has sniffer dogs and snipers on the roof. Published by Pluto Press.
“Beautifully written and magically structured, Emma Tom’s Bali:
Paradise Lost? is an evocative, funny, and honest look at the on-again, off-again love affair between Australians and the Indonesian island we like to call our own.”
- Linda Jaivin, author of The Infernal Optimist and The Monkey and the Dragon.
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Something About Mary
Something About Mary may be the only royal biography to contain more jokes than dates. It also has a couple of big, important messages. One of these is: Be careful what you wish for. Especially if your wish is to become a famous fairy tale princess. Aspiring princesses tend to imagine every moment will be spent skipping gaily round a crystal palace sprinkling gold and silver fairy dust and singing “tra la la, I’m so rich and happy and thin”. If your experience is anything like Her Royal Highness Crown Princess Mary of Denmark’s, however, there may also be a private investigator parked outside your house going through your rubbish bin and doing his business into a Tupperware container. Just one of many things they don’t tell you in the standard Happily Ever Afters. Published by Pluto Press.
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Evidence
An excruciatingly autobiographical novel about being a miserable 14-year-old in rural suburbia and wondering whether it is better to pass or fail The Frigid Test. Someone also gets burned alive. Emma Tom wrote Evidence with some help from her government in the form of an Australian Council grant. Published by HarperCollins.
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Babewatch
A PGR-rated collection of short non-fiction for badly behaved young girls and boys. Published by Hodder Headline.
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Deadset
A slapstick crime novel narrated by a dead school girl. Not what you’d call an easy read, though a journalist once said it reminded her a bit of White Noise by Don DeLillo. Emma Tom knows this was a beautiful lie but still thinks it’s one of the nicest things anyone could ever say about a book. Two other fans of Deadset were the guy who wrote Trainspotting and the judges for the 1998 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Asia and the South Pacific (who gave it a prize for Best First Novel). Published by Random House.
