Motherhood

by Sheila Heti

Genres: Biographical; Family Life; Women's Fiction

Synopsis

From the author of How Should a Person Be? ("one of the most talked-about books of the year"—Time Magazine) and the New York Times Bestseller Women in Clothes comes a daring audiobook about whether to have children.

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 audiobook 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 audiobook that will surely spark lively conversations about womanhood, parenthood, and about how—and for whom—to live.

Release date: May 7, 2019

Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.

Print pages: 288

Sample

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Flipping three coins on a desk. Two or three heads—yes. Two or three tails—no.

Is this book a good idea?

yes

Is the time to start it now?

yes

Here, in Toronto?

yes

So then there’s nothing to be worried about?

yes

Yes, there’s nothing to be worried about?

no

Should I be worried?

yes

What should I be worried about? My soul?

yes

Will reading help my soul?

yes

Will being quiet help my soul?

yes

Will this book help my soul?

yes

So then I’m doing everything right?

no

Am I handling my relationship wrong?

no

Am I wrong in ignoring the suffering of others?

no

Am I wrong in ignoring the political world?

no

Am I wrong in not being grateful for the life I have?

yes

And the things I can do with it, having this time and prosperity?

no

Having my particular being?

yes

Is the time for worrying about my particular being over?

yes

Is this the time to begin thinking about the soul of time?

yes

Do I have everything I need to begin?

yes

Should I start at the beginning and move straight through to the end?

no

Should I do whatever I feel like, then stitch it all together later?

no

Should I start at the beginning, not knowing what will come next?

yes

Is this conversation the beginning?

yes

How about those rolls of colored tape Erica bought me, sitting over there. Should I use them somehow?

no

Should I just let them sit there and look at them?

no

Should I give them back to her?

no

Should I hide them from sight?

yes

In the cupboard?

yes.


Copyright © 2018 by Sheila Heti.