If It's Not One Thing, It's Your Mother

A memoir of motherhood and marriage that will make you laugh and cry - and then laugh again

'This is the sort of book that made me want to be the person who wrote it. Pithy, painful and very, very funny' Emma Thompson

'[A] mix of comedy and emotion that makes up this warm and intimate memoir . This is a funny, affectionate memoir about being an unconventional parent' Daily Mail

Julia Sweeney was nearing forty, and quite famous, when she got on a flight to China to turn her life upside down. She had a flourishing career as a comedienne and performer, ample friends and admirers, but what she didn’t have was a child and, after a string of non-committal boyfriends, she decided to adopt alone.

Mulan was one-and-a-half years old when she met her new mother, and every bit as feisty as the Disney character (whom she was emphatically not named for). If It's Not One Thing, It’s Your Mother is the story of this unexpected mother-daughter pair who eventually became – to Julia’s astonishment and in a hilariously unconventional way – a mother-daughter-father trio.

From being mistaken for her daughter’s grandmother to her tragically short-lived belief that knitting a man a sweater will make him commit to you, Julia’s memoir is at once hilarious, poignant, provocative and wise. It is a story of adoption, Hollywood, dogs, death, marriage, Santa Claus, race and religion, the birds, the bees (and the frogs…) and everything else along the way.

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