Overview

'She drinks coffee until she can drink wine and then she goes to sleep so that she can wake up and drink coffee until she can drink wine again. Is this not the story of every mother? she asks herself.' Hiding Places is a compelling and beautifully written meditation on early motherhood and creativity. Told through a series of fragments that range from raw and troubled to delightful and hilarious, this remarkable book responds to the unexpected shocks and discoveries of becoming a mother, drawing on excerpts from family letters and secretive medical records, and advice contained in Truby King's 1913 tract, Feeding and Care of Baby. Partly a slowly unfurling unsent love letter to an admired writer, partly a 'book of essays that is a notebook about trying to write a book of essays', and partly an attempt to simply hang on through tumultuous times, Hiding Places deftly blends personal reflection with family history, social critique and literary analysis. The result is a fresh, funny and deeply moving look at what it means to care and to create - at what gets lost or hidden in the process, and what is found or revealed. 'It's not what she says,' writes Edmeades, 'but how she says it that reveals what hides beneath.' Resonant with, yet distinct from, the works of writers like Maggie Nelson, Kate Zambreno, Olga Ravn and Chris Kraus, Hiding Places is an inspiring read for anyone interested in the dangerous yet fruitful zones where life and art overlap.

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9781991348111

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Lynley Edmeades has an MA in Creative Writing from Queen's University Belfast and a PhD in avant-garde literature from the University of Otago. Her previous books include As the Verb Tenses (Otago University Press, 2016), Listening In (Otago University Press, 2019) and Bordering on Miraculous, a collaboration with artist Saskia Leek (Massey University Press, 2022). She is the current editor of Landfall Tauraka and teaches English and creative writing at Otakou Whakaihu Waka.

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