Motherhood,Used

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 responsefinallyto 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 peoplefully as much so as if it was a human that Sheila gave birth tothough 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 manyfaceted novel of ideas. Heti is like no one else." Mark Greif, author of Against Everything "I think of Motherhood as a beautiful, natural, living thinga rare tree in the carfilled 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 interdimensionalit