Review: Interesting Look into a Modern Woman's Life
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 02 11, 2013
Anna M. Maslin's "The Binary Year" is a semi-autobiographical work that follows one year (2011) in the life of a British woman and her family. As the New Year begins, Anna and her husband, Drew, are planning their daughter's wedding, raising their younger children, handling cancer scares, and dealing with the day-to-day hectic schedule that comes with being a parent.Anna retires from her impressive job in international health services and decides to go down the arduous but ultimately rewarding path of becoming a foster parent, and though that throws even more stress and turmoil into their lives, she handles it calmly and with grace.I enjoyed many things about this book, and did not enjoy one thing in particular, but I will start with what I enjoyed. I enjoyed the diary format, and I really feel like "The Binary Year" gave me a realistic look into the life of a dedicated mother and strong woman. Anna is honest about how life exhausts her, but she still manages to take joy in so much. I also liked that she sprinkled in so many references to both pop culture events and world events (the Royal Wedding, Osama Bin Laden being killed, etc.), because that took me back to where I was and what was going on in my life when those things happened. Finally, the foster parent passages were so interesting to me--I don't know much about the process or what being a foster parent entails, but feel like I learned a bit about what it's like practically and emotionally.Now, on to what I didn't like--there were numerous typos, grammatical, and punctuation errors throughout "The Binary Year." When these things are present in a book (and they of course are present; even the hugest houses can't turn out perfect books), it's really distracting; this was distracting on a large scale in this book. If the book had had a good editor and someone to properly format the novel/memoir, then I could have just enjoyed the story without all the distractions.In all, though, this is an interesting read that gives a good window into the life of a modern woman dealing with modern problems (part of the modern vibe is likely that Maslin sprinkles in Facebook messages and conversations into her diary, as well, for an up-to-date feeling).