The Fun Times Brigade
A Toronto woman tries to balance motherhood with being a musician in Lindsay Zier-Vogel’s heartfelt novel The Fun Times Brigade.
Amy’s newborn daughter, Alice, screams, won’t sleep, and won’t take a bottle. Amy’s husband, Max, helps to care for Alice, but he’s a busy math professor, while Amy is on an extended break from popular children’s band the Fun Times Brigade. The other band members are Fran and Jim, famous married folk singers who gave Amy her big break.
In chapters that alternate between past and present, the novel juxtaposes Amy’s life as a rising star to her life at home with Alice, whom she adores but whose existence upended her career. Her life is further complicated when Jim is diagnosed with cancer. She struggles to redefine her sense of self in the face of these changes.
Its prose punctuated by musical references and children’s song lyrics, the book moves between the past and the present to trace Amy’s development. In the present, discussions of problematic breastfeeding recur, and Amy often seems too accepting of her maternal status quo. Though she imagined she would continue performing after having Alice, her biggest accomplishment now seems to be getting out of the house with her newborn.
Past reflections add additional layers, showing that Amy also felt inferior being a children’s musician. Presented with the opportunity to play with BIKES, a famous Toronto group, she turns her back on Fran and Jim. When those choices lead to disastrous consequences for her career and her marriage, Amy looks for a way back to the people, and music, she loves, resulting in poignancy.
In the moving novel The Fun Times Brigade, a woman navigates new motherhood, hoping not to lose herself as an artist in the process.
Reviewed by
Yelena Furman
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. No fee was paid by the publisher for this review. Foreword Reviews only recommends books that we love. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
