Overview

A provocative novel about the desire and duty to procreate, from the author of the critically acclaimed How Should A Person Be? 'Confronts the philosophical questions raised by childbearing and womanhood' Sally Rooney 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. 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. 'Likely to become the defining literary work on the subject' Guardian **A Daily Telegraph, Financial Times, Irish Times, Refinery29, TLS and The White Review Book of the Year **

Full Product Details

Author:   Sheila Heti
Publisher:   Vintage Publishing
Imprint:   Vintage
Dimensions:   Width: 13.00cm , Height: 3.00cm , Length: 19.40cm
Weight:   0.220kg
ISBN:  

9780099592846

ISBN 10:   0099592843
Pages:   304
Publication Date:   30 May 2019
Audience:   General/trade ,  College/higher education ,  Professional and scholarly ,  General ,  Tertiary & Higher Education
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In stock  
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Table of Contents

Reviews

Earthy and philosophical and essential . . . Motherhood floats, as did Heti's excellent novel How Should a Person Be?, somewhere between fiction and nonfiction. It reads like an inspired monologue . . . Heti's semi-fiction, like that of writers like Ben Lerner, Rachel Cusk and Teju Cole, among others, is dismantling our notions of what a novel should be . . . She deals out her ideas in no-nonsense form, as if she were pulling espresso shots . . . This book is endlessly quotable, and a perfect review would be nothing but quotations. She makes a banquet of her objections to parenthood. If you are an underliner, as I am, your pen may go dry . . . Indeed, Heti always seems to be drawing from a paranormally deep well . . . Funny . . . Cannily employed. -- Dwight Garner * The New York Times * Sheila Heti's book seems likely to become the defining literary work on the subject, perhaps most of all because as a novel, replete with ambiguity and contradiction, it refuses to define anything, and certainly not the childlessness that provides its subject or the motherhood that provides its title. -- Lara Feigel * Guardian * Motherhood confronts the philosophical questions raised by childbearing and womanhood... Heti continues the project of How Should a Person Be? in at least one way: by opening out seemingly individual experiences into a general inquiry about ways of being...as concerned with art as it is with mothering... Heti's narrator wants to create - specifically, to create something that will honour the memory of her mother and grandmother... Motherhood both documents that desire and fulfils it. -- Sally Rooney * London Review of Books * My favorite books this year were Keith Gessen's A Terrible Country and Sheila Heti's Motherhood. Both books are brave and funny reckonings with impossible situations and both grapple with ethical questions in a human and transparent way... Heti dramatises a question lived by nearly every first-world person. At the same time, she demonstrates the contradictions between freedom and the tyranny of choice and how impossible it is for anyone to ever make the 'right' decision. -- Chris Kraus * The White Review Books of the Year * Heti thinks clearly and originally -- Adam Kirsch * Times Literary Supplement, **Books of the Year** *

Earthy and philosophical and essential . . . Motherhood floats, as did Heti's excellent novel How Should a Person Be?, somewhere between fiction and nonfiction. It reads like an inspired monologue . . . Heti's semi-fiction, like that of writers like Ben Lerner, Rachel Cusk and Teju Cole, among others, is dismantling our notions of what a novel should be . . . She deals out her ideas in no-nonsense form, as if she were pulling espresso shots . . . This book is endlessly quotable, and a perfect review would be nothing but quotations. She makes a banquet of her objections to parenthood. If you are an underliner, as I am, your pen may go dry . . . Indeed, Heti always seems to be drawing from a paranormally deep well . . . Funny . . . Cannily employed. -- Dwight Garner * The New York Times * Sheila Heti's book seems likely to become the defining literary work on the subject, perhaps most of all because as a novel, replete with ambiguity and contradiction, it refuses to define anything, and certainly not the childlessness that provides its subject or the motherhood that provides its title. -- Lara Feigel * Guardian * Motherhood confronts the philosophical questions raised by childbearing and womanhood... Heti continues the project of How Should a Person Be? in at least one way: by opening out seemingly individual experiences into a general inquiry about ways of being...as concerned with art as it is with mothering... Heti's narrator wants to create - specifically, to create something that will honour the memory of her mother and grandmother... Motherhood both documents that desire and fulfils it. -- Sally Rooney * London Review of Books * Heti thinks clearly and originally -- Adam Kirsch * Times Literary Supplement, **Books of the Year** * Probing, psychologically unafraid, witty... With its mix of autofiction and philosophy, Motherhood is no manifesto but an essential - and often exasperating - exploration of uncertainty and of the art that can be created from it. -- Catherine Taylor * Financial Times *

Earthy and philosophical and essential . . . Motherhood floats, as did Heti's excellent novel How Should a Person Be?, somewhere between fiction and nonfiction. It reads like an inspired monologue . . . Heti's semi-fiction, like that of writers like Ben Lerner, Rachel Cusk and Teju Cole, among others, is dismantling our notions of what a novel should be . . . She deals out her ideas in no-nonsense form, as if she were pulling espresso shots . . . This book is endlessly quotable, and a perfect review would be nothing but quotations. She makes a banquet of her objections to parenthood. If you are an underliner, as I am, your pen may go dry . . . Indeed, Heti always seems to be drawing from a paranormally deep well . . . Funny . . . Cannily employed. -- Dwight Garner * The New York Times * Sheila Heti's book seems likely to become the defining literary work on the subject, perhaps most of all because as a novel, replete with ambiguity and contradiction, it refuses to define anything, and certainly not the childlessness that provides its subject or the motherhood that provides its title. -- Lara Feigel * Guardian * Motherhood confronts the philosophical questions raised by childbearing and womanhood... Heti continues the project of How Should a Person Be? in at least one way: by opening out seemingly individual experiences into a general inquiry about ways of being...as concerned with art as it is with mothering... Heti's narrator wants to create - specifically, to create something that will honour the memory of her mother and grandmother... Motherhood both documents that desire and fulfils it. -- Sally Rooney * London Review of Books * Probing, psychologically unafraid, witty... With its mix of autofiction and philosophy, Motherhood is no manifesto but an essential - and often exasperating - exploration of uncertainty and of the art that can be created from it. -- Catherine Taylor * Financial Times * Motherhood is an amazing book and the perfect successor to How Should A Person Be?. If How Should A Person Be? is for your twenties then Motherhood is for your thirties when you have to make that decision. She's a woman, so it's about female experience, but really every person has to make that decision - whether they want to be a parent. -- Chris Kraus * AnOther Magazine *

Heti thinks clearly and originally -- Adam Kirsch * Times Literary Supplement, **Books of the Year** * My favorite books this year were Keith Gessen's A Terrible Country and Sheila Heti's Motherhood. Both books are brave and funny reckonings with impossible situations and both grapple with ethical questions in a human and transparent way... Heti dramatises a question lived by nearly every first-world person. At the same time, she demonstrates the contradictions between freedom and the tyranny of choice and how impossible it is for anyone to ever make the 'right' decision. -- Chris Kraus * The White Review Books of the Year * Motherhood confronts the philosophical questions raised by childbearing and womanhood... Heti continues the project of How Should a Person Be? in at least one way: by opening out seemingly individual experiences into a general inquiry about ways of being...as concerned with art as it is with mothering... Heti's narrator wants to create - specifically, to create something that will honour the memory of her mother and grandmother... Motherhood both documents that desire and fulfils it. -- Sally Rooney * London Review of Books * Sheila Heti's book seems likely to become the defining literary work on the subject, perhaps most of all because as a novel, replete with ambiguity and contradiction, it refuses to define anything, and certainly not the childlessness that provides its subject or the motherhood that provides its title. -- Lara Feigel * Guardian * Earthy and philosophical and essential . . . Motherhood floats, as did Heti's excellent novel How Should a Person Be?, somewhere between fiction and nonfiction. It reads like an inspired monologue . . . Heti's semi-fiction, like that of writers like Ben Lerner, Rachel Cusk and Teju Cole, among others, is dismantling our notions of what a novel should be . . . She deals out her ideas in no-nonsense form, as if she were pulling espresso shots . . . This book is endlessly quotable, and a perfect review would be nothing but quotations. She makes a banquet of her objections to parenthood. If you are an underliner, as I am, your pen may go dry . . . Indeed, Heti always seems to be drawing from a paranormally deep well . . . Funny . . . Cannily employed. -- Dwight Garner * The New York Times *

Earthy and philosophical and essential . . . Motherhood floats, as did Heti's excellent novel How Should a Person Be?, somewhere between fiction and nonfiction. It reads like an inspired monologue . . . Heti's semi-fiction, like that of writers like Ben Lerner, Rachel Cusk and Teju Cole, among others, is dismantling our notions of what a novel should be . . . She deals out her ideas in no-nonsense form, as if she were pulling espresso shots . . . This book is endlessly quotable, and a perfect review would be nothing but quotations. She makes a banquet of her objections to parenthood. If you are an underliner, as I am, your pen may go dry . . . Indeed, Heti always seems to be drawing from a paranormally deep well . . . Funny . . . Cannily employed. -- Dwight Garner * The New York Times * Sheila Heti's book seems likely to become the defining literary work on the subject, perhaps most of all because as a novel, replete with ambiguity and contradiction, it refuses to define anything, and certainly not the childlessness that provides its subject or the motherhood that provides its title. -- Lara Feigel * Guardian * Motherhood confronts the philosophical questions raised by childbearing and womanhood... Heti continues the project of How Should a Person Be? in at least one way: by opening out seemingly individual experiences into a general inquiry about ways of being...as concerned with art as it is with mothering... Heti's narrator wants to create - specifically, to create something that will honour the memory of her mother and grandmother... Motherhood both documents that desire and fulfils it. -- Sally Rooney * London Review of Books * My favorite books this year were Keith Gessen's A Terrible Country and Sheila Heti's Motherhood. Both books are brave and funny reckonings with impossible situations and both grapple with ethical questions in a human and transparent way... Heti dramatises a question lived by nearly every first-world person. At the same time, she demonstrates the contradictions between freedom and the tyranny of choice and how impossible it is for anyone to ever make the `right' decision. -- Chris Kraus * The White Review Books of the Year * Heti thinks clearly and originally -- Adam Kirsch * Times Literary Supplement, **Books of the Year** *

Author Information

Sheila Heti is the author of ten books, including the novels Motherhood and How Should a Person Be?, which New York magazine deemed one of the 'New Classics of the twenty-first century' and which was longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction. She was named one of the 'New Vanguard' by the New York Times book critics, who, along with a dozen other magazines and newspapers, chose Motherhood as a best book of the year. Her novels have been translated into twenty-four languages. She is the former interviews editor of The Believer magazine. She lives in Toronto.

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