The Idler

More Idle Parent Reviews

29 April 2009

The conservative critic Toby Young, writing in the Mail on Sunday, said: “this is an original, thought-provoking book” while also teasing me for being what he called “a fanatical anti-capitalist”. In the New Statesman, Zoe Williams was hugely positive about the book: “He is never boring; at times he is intensely readable.” She described the Idler as “a magazine-turned-book that was really everything you could possibly ask for from the modern pamphleteer: it was funny, original, unorthodox, cool in an effervescent, unstudied way, intellectual without the angst and defensiveness,” and concluded: “The ‘idle’ brand is a bit of red herring, I think. There is a serious, pioneering spirit underneath this velvet smoking jacket.” And in the Evening Standard, a thoughtful Ned Denny focussed on the Taoist elements of the book, calling the idea of idleness “wu wei” (ie the philosophy of non-action) for the West. “Add liberal doses of music, jovial company and deep woods to play in—all central to the idle, not to say Taoist, life—and you have a recipe for bright, happy people with need of neither television nor shrink. Who could ask for more?”

Alain De Botton, whose new book The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work is a great read, says of The Idle Parent: “Tom’s book came as a huge relief to the whole family. Suddenly, we no longer had to feel guilty that we hated days out at overpriced so-called attractions. Suddenly, it was OK to leave the kids to sort it out among themselves. Suddenly, it was OK to be responsibly lazy. This is the most counter-intuitive, but most helpful and consoling child-raising manual I’ve yet read.”

TH