284 pages
English language
Published Oct. 30, 2018
In Motherhood, Sheila Heti asks what is gained and what is lost when a woman becomes a mother, treating the most consequential decision of early adulthood with the candor, originality, and humor that have won Heti international acclaim and made How Should A Person Be? required reading for a generation. In her late thirties, when her friends are asking when they will become mothers, the narrator of Heti's intimate and urgent novel considers whether she will do so at all. In a narrative spanning several years, casting among the influence of her peers, partner, and her duties to her forbearers, she struggles to make a wise and moral choice. After seeking guidance from philosophy, her body, mysticism, and chance, she discovers her answer much closer to home. Motherhood is a courageous, keenly felt, and starkly original novel that will surely spark lively conversations about womanhood, parenthood, and about how, and …
In Motherhood, Sheila Heti asks what is gained and what is lost when a woman becomes a mother, treating the most consequential decision of early adulthood with the candor, originality, and humor that have won Heti international acclaim and made How Should A Person Be? required reading for a generation. In her late thirties, when her friends are asking when they will become mothers, the narrator of Heti's intimate and urgent novel considers whether she will do so at all. In a narrative spanning several years, casting among the influence of her peers, partner, and her duties to her forbearers, she struggles to make a wise and moral choice. After seeking guidance from philosophy, her body, mysticism, and chance, she discovers her answer much closer to home. Motherhood is a courageous, keenly felt, and starkly original novel that will surely spark lively conversations about womanhood, parenthood, and about how, and for whom, to live.
Motherhood is an honest, sensitive, and sometimes troubled account of a woman who is trying to find out what short of person she is like, and what short of person she is not like. Sheila Heti has a choice and a decision to make on how she wants to live her life. Some people maybe be very condemning of her, but she knows that her life is truly hers. She is free.
Five BIG stars: I have never before felt more “seen” when reading a book. The author describes so many things I have thought and felt, but was never able to articulate. That being said, I did not love the structure — it’s really more of a collection of essays about choosing whether or not to have a child, less than it is a novel. Nevertheless, I would heartily recommend this thought-provoking book to all women, whether or not they have chosen to have kids.
I particularly loved this bit: “I feel a new giddiness and wonder that I managed to pass through my childbearing years without bearing a child. It really feels like a miracle, like something I always set out to do, but had no faith that I would ever achieve. I didn’t know whether I would make it — but now there is relief inside.” I’ve been so …
Five BIG stars: I have never before felt more “seen” when reading a book. The author describes so many things I have thought and felt, but was never able to articulate. That being said, I did not love the structure — it’s really more of a collection of essays about choosing whether or not to have a child, less than it is a novel. Nevertheless, I would heartily recommend this thought-provoking book to all women, whether or not they have chosen to have kids.
I particularly loved this bit: “I feel a new giddiness and wonder that I managed to pass through my childbearing years without bearing a child. It really feels like a miracle, like something I always set out to do, but had no faith that I would ever achieve. I didn’t know whether I would make it — but now there is relief inside.” I’ve been so excited to turn 45 this year, and now I realize this is why. Thank you, Sheila Heti, for giving us this book.
Did not go everywhere I thought it could, but very honest and true for the impossible-to-know questions ones asks and is asked in weighing over a lifetime whether "to not have children" is really a decision one (or two) makes in earnest.
