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Alternadad
by Neal Pollack


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Pollack tells the story of how he learned to be a father to his son, Elijah, after the failure of his short-lived rock 'n' roll dreams.

Pantheon, 304 pages
01/09/2007
$23.95

ISBN: 0375423621

Nonfiction
Biographies & Memoirs

All reviews are classified as one of five grades: Outstanding (4 points), Favorable (3), Mixed (2), Unfavorable (1) and Terrible (0). To calculate the Metascore, we divide total points achieved by the total points possible (i.e., 4 x the number of reviews), with the resulting percentage (multiplied by 100) being the Metascore. Learn more...

Booklist David Pitt

Both laugh-out-loud funny and cry-softly poignant. [15 Dec 2006, p.10]

Boston Globe Naomi Rand

A humorous, extremely readable memoir of fatherhood.

Houston Chronicle Andrew Dansby

Frequently amusing and disarmingly touching.

Los Angeles Times Christopher Noxon

Pollack is smart enough not to glorify his foolishness - he's always the butt of his jokes.

Slate Michael Agger

His book is in earnest; it's Pollack unplugged. And despite his overdetermined musical taste, Pollack is not really an alternadad. He's a newly uptight, first-time dad.

The New York Times Book Review Elissa Schappell

The responsibilities of fatherhood awaken in Pollack a passion to better his dodgy neighborhood, and this gives his slight though often amusingly cranky memoir some ballast.

LA Weekly Ella Taylor

To the degree that Alternadad is about the confounding of Pollack’s expectations that he would raise a cool kid while maintaining his own cool life (soon after Elijah was born, Pollack took off on tour with his rock band), it is funny and appealing. But soon his self-deprecating candor tips over into narcissistic bombast, replete with page after page of fully reproduced father-son dialogue on how he shaped his little boy ("this, then, was my legacy to my son") in his own hip, nonconformist image.

Publishers Weekly

[Pollack] never really defines what it is that makes his parenting so alternative other than that he wants to be a parent and still get high and stay out late. [13 Nov 2006, p.46]

Kirkus Reviews

Foolproof material, illustrated with snapshots proving Elijah's cuteness. [15 Oc 2006, p.1059]

Entertainment Weekly Warren Cohen

Pollack's quest to balance partying and parenting may resonate with some, but he can't overcome a basic truth: Your own child-rearing adventures are seldom as enthralling to other people.

Washington Post Blake Gopnik

It reads like a 288-page Christmas letter, sent to all and sundry by that "clever" member of the family who took a couple of creative writing classes in college.

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Alternadad by Neal Pollack

Alternadad
by Neal Pollack