I have always tried to find books that explain and explore my life stage. When I was a young mother of little babies, I read many books about early motherhood. When I was studying and travelling and working as a waitress, those topics were represented in my reading too. Now that I’m a woman writer in midlife, with growing children and an art practice, I’m keen to read books by and about women writers who evoke the joys and struggles of this period: aging, the tensions between freedom and responsibility, marriage and separation, ambition and desire.
This is a speculative literary novel about motherhood, marriage, artmaking, technology, and grief. It is the story of Esther, a separated mother of two living in Melbourne. When the novel opens, Esther is on a gurney in terrible physical condition. She has no idea where she is or where her children are. There’s only one other person in the building.
As the novel unfolds, Esther must work out where she is, who she is with, and what has happened to her, but the answers to these puzzles won’t be anything she could have ever imagined.
This is the diary Australian writer Helen Garner kept during a difficult period of her life: the period when she was married to (and eventually separated from) her third husband.
The writing is exquisite, which is why I love this book. Garner records the intricacies and intimacies of the marriage in such exacting terms. Her observations about marriage and the world leave me breathless.
Bold, original and never one to shy away from the truth, Helen Garner's writing has shaped Australian literature. The author has kept a diary for almost all her life. But until now, those exercise books filled with her thoughts, observations, frustrations and joys have been locked away, out of bounds, in a laundry cupboard. Finally, Garner has opened her diaries and invited readers into the world behind her novels and works of non-fiction. Recorded with frankness, humor and steel-sharp wit, these accounts of her everyday life provide an intimate insight into the work of one of Australia’s greatest living writers.…
I have never read a book about motherhood or writing like this one. As I read Debre’s autofictional account of losing custody of her child after leaving her marriage, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was reading something truly original.
Women are not supposed to leave their families to pursue their artistic ambitions, but Debre’s queer character does just that. This is a really slim, sometimes shocking book. I will admire and continue thinking about this book forever.
'Destined to become a classic of its kind' Maggie Nelson
'One of the most compulsive voices I've read in years' Olivia Laing, Observer
When Constance told her ex-husband that she was dating women, he made a string of unfounded accusations that separated her from her young son, Paul. Laurent trained Paul to say he no longer wants to see his mother, and the judge believed him.
She approaches this new life with passionate intensity and the desire for an unencumbered existence, certain that no love can last. Apart from cigarettes, two regular lovers and women she has brief affairs with,…
This book might be my favorite of the year. In it, a semi-famous artist in midlife wrestles with marriage, motherhood, and desire.
The work is exceptional in its artistry and literary merit; it gives voice to otherwise silenced realities in women’s lives: motherhood, aging, sex, artmaking, and freedom—all topics close to my heart. It’s also extremely funny.
The New York Times bestselling author returns with an irreverently sexy, tender, hilarious and surprising novel about a woman upending her life
“A frank novel about a midlife awakening, which is funnier and more boldly human than you ever quite expect….the bravery of All Fours is nothing short of riveting.”—Vogue
“A novel that presses into that tender bruise about the anxiety of aging, of what it means to have a female body that is aging, and wanting the freedom to live a fuller life…Deeply funny and achingly true.” —LA Times
This book is a bible for women in midlife. One of Levy’s ‘living memoirs’, it captures the author’s experience of leaving her marriage at fifty and remaking her life as a writer.
The pose is beautiful: spare and elegant. Importantly, the book explores how it is possible to create a life focused on artistic pursuit, children, and friendship, as opposed to romantic partnership, material wealth, and conservative notions of stability.
I reread it every year to remind myself of what is possible.
A GUARDIAN BEST BOOK OF THE 21ST CENTURY WINNER OF THE PRIX FEMINA ETRANGER 2020
Following on from the critically acclaimed Things I Don't Want to Know, discover the powerful second memoir in Deborah Levy's essential three-part 'Living Autobiography'.
'I can't think of any writer aside from Virginia Woolf who writes better about what it is to be a woman' Observer _________________________________
'Life falls apart. We try to get a grip and hold it together. And then we realise we don't want to hold it together . . .'
The final instalment in Deborah Levy's critically acclaimed 'Living Autobiography', Real…
I was absolutely riveted by this huge doorstop of a biography exploring the life of Sylvia Plath. I’m not a diehard Plath fan per se, but I am always drawn to books about writers’ lives.
The intersection of Plath’s death with her experiences of motherhood, her writing life, and the failure of her marriage also brings this story firmly into my wheelhouse. (While Plath might not technically have been in midlife, I would argue that she was already precociously facing many of its common pitfalls when she died.)
This book is meticulously researched and includes new archival evidence. I loved it so much that after I finished its 600-something pages, I wanted to start over immediately.
The first biography of this great and tragic poet that takes advantage of a wealth of new material, this is an unusually balanced, comprehensive and definitive life of Sylvia Plath.
'Surely the final, the definitive, biography of Sylvia Plath' Ali Smith
*WINNER OF THE SLIGHTLY FOXED PRIZE 2021* *A BOOK OF THE YEAR IN THE DAILY TELEGRAPH AND THE TIMES* *FINALIST FOR THE PULITZER PRIZE IN BIOGRAPHY 2021*
Drawing on a wealth of new material, Heather Clark brings to life the great and tragic poet, Sylvia Plath. Refusing to read Plath's work as if her every act was a harbinger…
I am adopted. For most of my life, I didn’t identify as adopted. I shoved that away because of the shame I felt about being adopted and not truly fitting into my family. But then two things happened: I had my own biological children, the only two people I know to date to whom I am biologically related, and then shortly after my second daughter was born, my older sister, also an adoptee, died of a drug overdose. These sequential births and death put my life on a new trajectory, and I started writing, out of grief, the history of adoption and motherhood in America.
I grew up thinking that being adopted didn’t matter. I was wrong. This book is my journey uncovering the significance and true history of adoption practices in America. Now, in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade, the renewed debate over women’s reproductive rights places an even greater emphasis on adoption. As a mother, historian, and adoptee, I am uniquely qualified to uncover the policies and practices of adoption.
The history of adoption, reframed through the voices of adoptees like me, and mothers who have been forced to relinquish their babies, blows apart old narratives…
Who Is a Worthy Mother?: An Intimate History of Adoption
Nearly every person in the United States is affected by adoption. Adoption practices are woven into the fabric of American society and reflect how our nation values human beings, particularly mothers. In the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court's overturning of Roe v. Wade, the renewed debate over women's reproductive rights places an even greater emphasis on adoption. As a mother, historian, and adoptee, Rebecca C. Wellington is uniquely qualified to uncover the policies and practices of adoption. Wellington's timely-and deeply researched-account amplifies previously marginalized voices and exposes the social and racial biases embedded in the United States' adoption industry.…
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