The Plate Spinner Chronicles

March 27, 2017
Romance author Valentin (Flight Risk) gathers her columns for the Chicago Tribune’s TribLocal into this slim collection, which explores the travails of working full-time while mothering five boys. Valentin defines a “plate spinner” as “a project-managing, child-rearing, meal-planning, rule-instilling, errand-running superhero.” Some chapters are meditations on workaday challenges such as adjusting hems and replacing faulty furnaces; others provide facile tips for back-to-school shopping (when one can experience “the thrill of the hunt for erasers”) and achieving work/life balance (“delegate, delegate, delegate”). While the “epic adventure” of the subtitle suggests a unified narrative, the columns operate on different timelines and lack connection. As a result, the book feels disjointed and bogged down by repetition (six of Chapter Seven’s eleven sections focus on Christmas). Brevity and milquetoast humor hold Valentin back from true introspection, though readers will enjoy the lovingly drawn “Running with Asperger’s,” in which she describes one of her sons finishing his first cross-country race, buoyed by cheers from parents and teammates alike, and the moving portrait of Valentin’s deceased brother-in-law in “Father’s Day in Memoriam.” Working parents may nod along with the trials she describes, but these chronicles are long on tongue-in-cheek advice and short on insight.