I've been loving these Amazon short stories for a quick and fun way to meet new authors. Unfortunately, this story didn't live up to the promise of fun adventures and witty banter. It's a fairly dull, lacking in detail or silly adventures.

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC for an honest review.

this was so totally charming and lovely. i find greer's writing style funny as always, and his real cast of characters in his life i found so unforgettable i almost wish he would write full-on nonfiction instead of very lifey and very whimsical metafiction. my only complaint is that it's too short!

Thank you NetGalley, Amazon Original Stories and Andrew Sean Greer for this eARC.

This was such a lovely story about son and mother relationship, and a reflection of life in general. A magnificent love letter to family, roadtrips traveling and bonding with ones mother. I loved this story so much, it made me think of all of my own roadtrips with my mother. This short story is funny, heartwarming and nostalgic.

What a warm hug in a book!

This charming books will make you laugh and make you pick up the phone to call your Mum.

It may only be little in pages but the story makes up for this. A perfect short novel.

Thank you to Amazon Original Stories and NetGalley for providing me with a copy.

“Perhaps we were both unimpressed by the Grand Canyon because the awe of infinity so many people feel, the satisfying horror of the bottomless darkness of things that such a sight reveals, the tear in the universe that lets the hellhounds in, is something my mother and I know perfectly well. It is the first thing we see each morning. We step over it like a crack in the sidewalk and go on. How can the Grand Canyon compete?”

“Mothers endure so much we do not even notice.”


man i felt this so heavy. it sort of made me sad in a way.

we need to do things before it’s too late, why wait?
the way we celebrate birthdays each year, why not also hold our own funerals and get to see all our loved ones gather and speak memories and life back into death? we’re here for a short time and need to feel that closeness. that appreciation. that escape from the drudgeries of everyday life.


a mother is a very special thing. knowing our mother as an individual is something i wish more people did.

"I know I am efficient
tell me I am beautiful "
These words perfectly describe the author's mother with whom he takes a road trip across America a few years ago.
This essay describes the author's experiences and worthy fun - filled memories he gained during this thoroughly planned but "wacky" journey.
I especially loved the little tidbits of deep insights he provides in the essay which elevates it from a short quick read to one we come back again in our dreams to ponder upon.

Overall , a well entertaining essay which we can breeze through one sitting with our loved ones....

Many thanks to #NetGalley and Amazon Original stories for providing me my first ever ARC for this amazing book

Thank you NetGalley and Amazon Original Stories for the chance to read and review this.

Honestly, it was just okay. While Greer's mom is fascinating, I wonder if he really was able to describe her. The road trip felt dry at times and he wasn't able to make it seem like that intense an experience even when it probably was.

However, I did just find int that "Peter, Paul and Mary" was a band. I always thought it was just Britney.

My compliments on the hilarious title. It drew me in, as it surely will many others. This is a quick and lively non-fiction essay about the author’s road trip with his mother. I enjoyed the anecdotes about their past as much as I did the trip itself. I love it when a writer invites you in, and reading this felt like a friend was telling me a story. I did find the ending abrupt, yet I enjoyed it while it lasted.
Thanks to NetGalley and Amazon Original Stories for granting my request for a digital ARC.

I saw the title and was instantly intrigued!

This nonfiction story follows the author/son and his mother that embarked on a road trip, all while reminiscing the past.

Personally I wasn’t so interested in the road trip as I was with hearing witty antidotes regarding the authors childhood. I was intrigued and wanted to learn more about this quirky dynamic with a “no-nonsense” mom and her eccentric son

As always, thank you NetGalley and the publisher fir providing me with this ARC in exchange for my honest review ☺️

2/5⭐️

When Pulitzer Prize winner author Andrew Greer plans to return back to San Francisco after a brief work stint in the city of Wichita, Kansas, what his mom suggests next results in a road trip across various cities of the United States with a mandatory stop at the Grand Canyon.

This poignant essay by the author of Less gives the reader a glimpse into Andrew Greer as a person, his love for whimsy, the characteristics he shared with his mother, be it constant worry or them being attracted to people of their own sex - In a way, consider this essay as one of the chapters of the autobiography of Andrew Greer if he ever plans to pen one.

This short but sweet essay has all characteristics that make it a pleasant read - posing for pictures in devil egg costumes, staying in places that are part weird, and part whimsy (and definitely not anyone’s first choice to stay the night to get rest) and planning a funeral for their mother while she’s still alive so she could witness it. This essay is equal parts hilarious, huge parts whimsy but doesn’t fail to tug at your heart strings.

Rating: 4/5

In 2016 (before his Pulitzer Prize for [book:Less|39927096]), Greer borrowed his mother's car to drive from San Francisco to Wichita, where he spent a month advising college students on their creative writing. His mother, Sandra decided to join him for the return trip as she has always wanted to see the Grand Canyon. To make the trip more fun Sean organised stop-offs and overnight stays in interesting places with the most unusual accomodation he could find in an attempt to amuse his mother.

This short essay written about that road trip is a touching and humorous portrayal of a mother and son who have a strong bond forged in their similar natures. Sandra is not easily amused or impressed. She is after all an eminent scientist (an Emeritus Professor of Chemistry of the University of Maryland) who is working on her own book, on ethics for physical scientists. But it turns out that Greer knows his mother and her sense of humour well and this is just the trip they needed. I could happily read a whole book of essays about Greer and his mother.

Ma che piccola, scintillante gemma! Il racconto di un viaggio on the road che è insieme simbolo e riassunto di due vite e del rapporto fra una madre e un figlio speciali. Adorabile.

I feel like I have been abandoned by the author, I knew I was reading a short story but the ending felt too abrupt. I thoroughly enjoyed this eccentric account of a road trip. I loved the bittersweet memories, witty narrative and nostalgic vibes when American dream was actually a dream and the country felt larger than the world. I wish it were longer…

Greer writes like your eccentric aunt after three glasses of chardonnay. He is somehow both wildly entertaining and yet insightful at the same time. Though this essay is short- it is sweet and I came away feeling like I knew mother. Is it perhaps because my own mother is a southern woman, a force, and a wild animal? Maybe, but I think readers of all sorts will find some portion of their own story in this tale. From Wichita to San Francisco, Greer regales readers with heartfelt emotion and a keen observation of life's little eccentricities.

The title is enough to make me want to read this, but then I saw the author and it became compulsory. Ever since I read Less I have enjoyed every word this man writes. My Mother and Other Wild Animals: An Essay is a short story from Amazon Originals - short yes, but very sweet.

The story is non fiction. Andrew takes a road trip with his mother, driving home to San Fransico from Kansas, via the Grand Canyon because his mother has never seen it. He plans a lot of rather outrageous stopovers just because, and his mother maintains her sense of humour about most of them. There are laugh aloud moments, but the dominant theme of the story is the relationship between the two of them and how they bond due to their likenesses.

Only a short essay but it is funny, moving and very real. Five stars from me.

4★
“My experience of America is limited to ’80s malls, pickled watermelon rind, Broadway shows, and fog; it is akin to owning only volume J–K of an encyclopedia.”

We once lost a volume of our Encylopedia when a daughter's schoolfriend borrowed it and nobody ever saw it again. Frustrating when we needed whatever letter it was. Old-school, pre-digital research.

I loved Greer’s Pulitzer prize-winning Less, an awkward man for whom I developed a kind of maternal affection. After hearing Greer interviewed several times, I was keen to see what his family was like, particularly his mother.

They drive together from where he’s been teaching in Wichita, Kansas, back home to California, but by a very particular route where the author has pre-booked everything. He wants this to be memorable and has chosen extremely quirky places to stay. He should have researched better. Even an old-school travel agent could have warned him.

They are very open with each other, more than most parents and adult offspring, I think. He reveals a lot about his parents, his identical twin brother (who is happily heterosexual with a family), and his own gay self.

“What about the Pulitzer Prize ceremony, at which she was my guest? (I won the Fiction prize for my comic novel.) Here she met Mia Farrow, whose son Ronan had won the Public Service award for his articles on Harvey Weinstein. What was going through my mother’s mind when she said, ‘Ms. Farrow, I believe I am prouder of your son than I am of my own’? I remember laughing out loud. There is no impressing Dr. Sandra Greer.”

A short, entertaining and rather tender read.

Thanks to #NetGalley and Amazon Original Stories for a copy of #MyMotherAndOtherWildAnimals

This short essay is a travel memoir and a tribute to the authors' time with his mother. It will maybe mean more to someone who reads his books. I would have wanted more of the road trip and descriptions of places.

I've read & enjoyed author Andrew Sean Greer's "Less" novels, so I grabbed this short travel memoir "My Mother and Other Wild Animals" when it was offered. I found it very touching, humorous & quite relatable, having made that road trip before myself (once with my own folks). Very well worth the short time it took to read it.

Are our mothers wild animals?

They're wild spirits that have lived and loved and survived and have been hardened by the fires that burn us. So if we consider wild animals as beautiful creatures in sync with themselves and their environment then I will go on and agree that our mothers are wild animals.

They are the ones that love us, our safety net, those that make us swear and laugh and cry. They are ours and we are theirs and that sense of belonging is precious.

Thank you Andrew Greer for reminding me.

An ARC gently provided by author/publisher via Netgalley.

“Not everyone wants to travel with their mother. But my mother and I have an agreement : I will take her on a wacky trip, she will complain the whole time, and together we’ll love every minute.”

My Mother And Other Wild Animals is an essay by award-winning, best-selling American author, Andrew Sean Greer. Back in 2016, in dire need of paid work, Greer takes a one-month teaching position in Wichita, Kansas, where he’ll be paid to “meet with creative writing students and give feedback on their short stories. No teaching, no class time, no committees or requirements outside of free advice”. His own car not up to the trip from San Francisco, he borrows his mother’s diesel VW Beetle. He takes the southern route: Arizona, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Kansas.

When he is about due to return, his mom suggests that she join him for the return road trip: she’s never seen the Grand Canyon. He resolves to provide that dash of colour, to baffle and amuse as best he can. He plans out a route via the Grand Canyon, and for every stop, “I choose the wackiest lodgings I can find. Sleeping in a giant chicken, an underground bunker, a hot-air balloon—not those things, but those kinds of things.”

Dr Sandra Greer is working on a textbook to be entitled Elements of Ethics for Physical Scientists, in which she hopes future scientists and engineers might consider not just the question of “can we?” but, more importantly, “should we?”

For the sake of storytelling and comedy, Greer has painted his mother as a patient but stern custodian of science and realism and himself as a wild and carefree exhibition of creativity and idealism. “The truth is, we are almost identical.”

But he notes “Leaving her husband must have felt like leaping off a cliff into the swift-flowing river of the unknown; leaving her laboratory in Maryland for a life near me and my brother in California, a move she made in her sixties, must have felt like losing all your luggage in a foreign country, a country whose border has closed.”

And the Grand Canyon? “Perhaps we were both unimpressed by the Grand Canyon because the awe of infinity so many people feel, the satisfying horror of the bottomless darkness of things that such a sight reveals, the tear in the universe that lets the hellhounds in, is something my mother and I know perfectly well. It is the first thing we see each morning. We step over it like a crack in the sidewalk and go on. How can the Grand Canyon compete?”

Greer concludes: “I have learned to flood my fears with optimism and not let mere terror make me miss the best of life. I believe I learned it from my mother.” His entertaining, funny, moving essay is enhanced with a few quirky photographs.
This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided by NetGalley and Amazon Original Stories