Guardian column
I recently called time on a two-year project during which I wrote a weekly column about childhood for The Guardian newspaper. The column was called “Down With The Kids” and it was intended as a gentle and humorous take on parenthood. You can read every episode here – I hope you’ll enjoy them. And please do leave comments and share your own stories – I find those are often better than what I come up with.
I’m currently thinking about whether I should publish the collection of columns as a book, or whether I should rework into a novel the very intense experience of being a columnist.
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I only discovered your writing today and have to say that I plan to read everything you have written. I had been trying to find some “extracurricular” reading as I am in school online and am always reading books that have been assigned to me (it takes so much of my time). Therefore, any time I have left is precious and I would like to thoroughly enjoy whatever I have chosen to read.
Thank you for making that choice easy.
Dear Chris,
I got surprisingly emotional upon seeing that your column will be finished. I have enjoyed your column each week for well over a year and have enjoyed each and every new surprise and laugh. My best wishes to you and your family! Thank you for making me smile so often.
-Kamaren
Dear Chris
I thoroughly enjoyed Down With The Kids, it was brilliant, funny and touching, interesting and unpretentious – and this couldn’t be said about the other “family” columns [...]. I often started reading the Saturday Guardian from you and Lucy Mangan (another “real” person), so I will miss it now, but at the same time I really respect your decision to stop it. It is for me yet another confirmation of your integrity (shining through the whole series).
I feel that having now discovered your website, and your books, it is time for me to start reading them.
Kind regards
Zofia
I have enjoyed your column so much – it brought back so many memories of when our kids were young (our kids, who are older than you – when people ask me if we have children, I try to remember to say “no, we have 4 adults”, but I don’t always manage it )
I hope you’re planning to put the whole lot together in a book – it should be required reading for new parents – or possibly people who are thinking of becoming parent…
Thanks once again,
Gin
Dear Chris
No doubt you will have had hundreds of comments about your wonderful column. The Saturday Guardian will not be the same from now on, but how in keeping with the whole tone of your articles to put your children’s interests first. Over the weeks you have put into words the feelings I had for our own children and now have for our grandchildren, and I shall miss you very much. Thank you so much for a great deal of pleasure.
Dear Chris,
I know you must be hearing this a lot, but I just wanted to say that when I realised – just like Kamaren – that it was your last column I was suprised at how emotional I felt! Somehow, invisibly, I had become attached to dropping in on your family each week through your observations. Such beautiful writing and such fantastic source material!
All good wishes for your brood, and thanks for all the columns.
Your column was a brilliant, funny, touching read – in terms of genre, it was of interest to read about children from the perspective of a father, à la Phil Hogan, Jon Ronson, Tim Dowling – but above and beyond that, you have such an idiosyncratic approach, interweaving/crowding so many thoughts and emotions into one well-worded, thought-provoking sentence.
Though, or because, I’m not at all scientific, I always marvelled at how you incorporated technical/engineering/scientific terms and concepts, and a great and challenging vocabulary, into your observations about family life.
The last line about enjoying it when your children laugh did predictably make me almost cry… The Guardian series should become a book – yes, a meta-book about the writing of the column would be interesting/postmodern.
Hats off to an entertaining, compassionate, amusing, compelling columnist – I’ll miss reading you weekly.
I didn’t realize you were the writer of the column about your children – but best wishes with whichever project you decide to embark on. In fact, I think it would be interesting to know more about the dilemmas of being a journalist; though I expect too much honesty might compromise one’s career prospects. Maybe that’s why humour is generally the vehicle which makes such accounts acceptable. Is it possible to do otherwise without adopting a persona that must surely become tiresome at the very least ?
I’m not assuming this is what you do at all: am currently reading about Little Bee – and suddenly felt curious to identify the writer.
I find the juxtaposition of Little Bee’s experience with those of Sarah and Lawrence very appropriate. Thank you for that. Quite apart from anything else, it feels like an attempt to consider our access to information and the responses that are evoked. We (ie the fortunate of us) have as much as we care to find and I suppose we make judgments according to what we are inclined already, to believe. Weaving the ‘two’ worlds together forces Bee’s story to become personal. To be considered alongside; without the separation or distance of the stated facts in another harrowing interview or article. Both come into our homes and grieve or galvanize us accordingly, but a book can show us truths and give life to someone’s story precisely through the intelligent manipulation of the writer. I’m sure am not writing anything new and maybe haven’t really described what’s been evoked by the reading of your book, but have felt drawn to putting something in writing myself! I appreciate your efforts.
Am on page 299 and will finish it later, but if I’m honest – and I hope you will not mind my writing this – I find the Lawrence character not entirely plausible. Perhaps it’s just that the story unfolds particularly quickly once we know his relationship with Sarah. However, it may be that it’s hard to have sympathy with someone so apparently unscrupulous, in spite of his ‘honesty’
Mr. cleave, l went to little bee.and l like the little bee. ıt is very nice book.thank you for ıt
Hi Chris having read and enjoyed your guardian column, i want to encourage you to publish it as a book just as it was . And having discovered you as a columnist, i am delighted to discover tha tyou are a novelist – so look forward to reading those while waiting for the book of Down with Kids to come out.
Best wishes
Just finished Little Bee and must say it was an experience. you are a very great writer, can’tt wait to read your first book, next book, etc. etc. I am sending it to my long time English friend. She has lived in
the US for many years,and is my oldest friend.
I just read Little Bee and I thought it was breathtaking!! I was hooked by your very first sentence. I am so amazed that you were able to write from a female perspective (no insult intended). I look forward to reading your other books! Thank you for such great literature. Sure wish Oprah would pick your book for her book club so others would be able to be blown away as I was!! Little Bee is a treasure!!
re the columns–
re the columns…PLEASE, PLEASE,PLEASE collect them in a book and make them available to to your readers!!!!!
I read Little Bee and was overwhelmed by it ! I am reading it again as it is the July selection for the Jacksonville Diversity Network Book Club (my recommendation!). I will be facilitating the dicussion.I learned about Incendiary from the research I was doing for the Book Club, and will find it immediately. Please keep writing, you have a great gift!
I would love to read your Guardian column entries – however when I click on the link provided I get the message “not found.”
MH – thank you – I have now fixed the link.
Wow! Hello Chris.. I just left a message on the Incendiary link but now I must write you again.. Our daughters, Sally and Ann, are a legal union in the UK and have an adopted son.. They fostered this boy from day 3 when he was removed to care.. By 6 months, our family in the States adored him and he was part of our family.. The fostering went on for a few years with visits to the States and our family visits to Wales.. If you, Chris, are interested in what it took to adopt this little boy, Nathan, into our family it might make another book! A barrister, a solicitor, and lots of money, but Nathan is now ours with our adult granddaughters to care for him into the next generation.. You can check with me for confirmation of this story or I will give you the addresses of the Bell Family in Wales..
Barbara & Carl Greiner, Stuart, Florida