Motherhood

Heti, Sheila

ISBN 10: 1432858882 ISBN 13: 9781432858889

Publisher: Thorndike Press Large Print, 2019

Synopsis

A daring, funny, and poignant novel about the desire and duty to procreate, by one of our most brilliant and original writers

Motherhood treats one of the most consequential decisions of early adulthood--whether or not to have children--with the intelligence, wit and originality that have won Sheila Heti international acclaim, and which led her previous work, How Should a Person Be?, to be called "one of the most talked-about books of the year" (TIME magazine).

Having reached an age when most of her peers are asking themselves when they will become mothers, Heti's narrator considers, with the same urgency, whether she will do so at all. Over the course of several years, under the influence of her partner, body, family, friends, mysticism and chance, she struggles to make a moral and meaningful choice.

In a compellingly direct mode that straddles the forms of the novel and the essay, Motherhood raises radical and essential questions about womanhood, parenthood, and how--and for whom--to live.

About this title

About the Author:

SHEILA HETI is the acclaimed author of the novel How Should a Person Be?, which was named a New York Times Notable Book, the story collection The Middle Stories, and the novel Ticknor, which was a finalist for the Trillium Book Award. Her writing has appeared in various publications, including The New York Times, London Review of Books, The Globe and Mail, n+1, McSweeney's and The Believer. She frequently collaborates with other writers and artists. Sheila Heti lives in Toronto.

Review:

"Here it finally is. A book for all of you who are considering having a baby, who had a baby, who didn't have a baby, who didn't want a baby, who don't know what they want but the clock is ticking anyway. This topic is finally tackled as if it were the most important decision in your life. Because, um. How lucky are we that one of our foremost thinkers took this upon herself, for years, in real time, wrestling every day and living to tell. So fucking ready to live in the world this book will help make. Read and discuss, discuss, discuss." ―Miranda July, author of The First Bad Man

"A provocative, creative, and triumphant work of philosophical feminist fiction . . . Heti writes with courage, curiosity, and uncommon truth." ―Booklist (starred review)

"Charismatic and beguilingly original . . . oddly compelling . . . Sheila is funny, and idiosyncratic enough to rub contra to 2018, a time when the litmus test for a woman's success is the extent to which her daily planner is a subject of marvel . . . A joy to read." ―Bookforum

"This lively, exhilaratingly smart, and deliberately, appropriately frustrating affair asks difficult questions about women's responsibilities and desires, and society's expectations." ―Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"An emotionally complex novel about motherhood that isn't about children. An intricately constructed book based on games of chance. This feels new."
―Jenny Offill, author of Dept. of Speculation

"This inquiry into the modern woman's moral, social and psychological relationship to procreation is an illumination, a provocation, and a response--finally--to the new norms of femininity, formulated from the deepest reaches of female intellectual authority. It is unlike anything else I've read. Sheila Heti has broken new ground, both in her maturity as an artist and in the possibilities of the female discourse itself." --Rachel Cusk, author of Outline and Transit

"I read this novel more quickly and eagerly than any I've read in ages. Sheila Heti's simple, elegant sentences invariably give pleasure; her thinking is incisive and wholly original as she grapples with the kind of unhappiness that many of us, myself included, prefer to distract ourselves from rather than look at squarely. Reading Motherhood forced me to become a little more honest with myself." --Adelle Waldman, author of The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P.

"Reading this beautiful novel, I felt I was watching a brilliant mind invent new tools for thinking. Sheila Heti wrings revelation from the act of asking, again and again, in ever more challenging and innovative ways, impossible questions of existence. Motherhood is a thrilling, very funny, and almost unbearably moving book." --Garth Greenwell, author of What Belongs to You

"I've never seen anyone write about the relationship between childlessness, writing, and mothers' sadnesses the way Sheila Heti does. I know Motherhood is going to mean a lot to many different people--fully as much so as if it was a human that Sheila gave birth to--though in a different and in fact incommensurate way. That's just one of many paradoxes that are not shied away from in this courageous, necessary, visionary book." --Elif Batuman, author of The Idiot and The Possessed

"With each of her novels, Sheila Heti invents a new novel form. Motherhood is a riveting story of love and fate, a powerful inspiration to reflect, and a subtle depiction of the lives of contemporary women and men, by an exceptional artist in theprime of her powers. Motherhood constitutes its own genre within the many-faceted novel of ideas. Heti is like no one else." --Mark Greif, author of Against Everything

"I think of Motherhood as a beautiful, natural, living thing--a rare tree in the car-filled parking lot of literature, offering aesthetic and sustainable pleasures while also bristling with multiple, helpful, compassionate functions in the world. The high stakes, complexity, intensity, playfulness, seriousness, and inter-dimensionality of Motherhood's synthesis of art and life, of the imagination and the universe, makes me excited about both life and literature. I recommend reading and rereading Motherhood." --Tao Lin, author of Shoplifting from American Apparel and Taipei

About this edition

• Publisher: Thorndike Press Large Print
• Publication date: 2019
• ISBN 10: 1432858882
• ISBN 13: 9781432858889
• Binding: Library Binding
• Number of pages: 411