Julia Sweeney was nearing forty, and quite famous, when she got on a flight to China to turn her life upside down. She had a flourishing career as a comedienne and performer, ample friends and admirers, but what she didn't have was a child and, after a string of non-committal boyfriends, she decided to adopt alone.
Mulan was one and a half years old when she met her new mother, and every bit as feisty as the Disney character (whom she was emphatically not named for). If It's Not One Thing It's Your Mother is the story of this quirky mother-daughter pair who eventually became - to Julia's astonishment and in a hilariously unexpected way - a mother-daughter-father trio, from their eventful journey home to the USA and the story of how they got their smelly dog, to a hilarious string of nannies and mannies and The Conversation in which Mulan worked out how men do it with other men.
This is memoir that wears its heart frankly and firmly on its sleeve. Julia Sweeney turns her considerable talent for comic performance to the story of her own journey to motherhood and marriage, and the result is a classic of its kind.
