‘There is joy, and there is rage’: the new generation of novelists writing about motherhood

The mother and child inhabit a domestic space that is insular, at times claustrophobic. Photograph: Guido Mieth/Getty Images From the shock and awe of labour to domestic isolation, a wave of recent novels captures the transformative nature of being a mother They say nothing prepares you. Before having my baby, I approached the literature of motherhood as though I were about to sit an exam. If my studies tempered the shock of birth and early parenthood, then I didn’t notice. The sheer physical and emotive force of the experience left me profoundly shaken. Words felt insufficient. And yet I kept reading – everything I could get my hands on. I wanted answers. I wanted to feel recognised. I wanted this untranslatable experience to be translated into language. Most of all, I think, I wanted restitution for all the maternal stories that had been left untold by centuries of silencing and minimising, not just for myself, but for all of us. Books about motherhood come in waves: the recent spate only the latest in a long line of literary endeavours. In the 1950s there was Shirley Jackson ’s Life Among the Savages. The 1960s wave saw Margaret Drabble ’s The Millstone and Doris Lessing ’s The Golden Notebook, alongside Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique ; the 1970s The Women’s Room by Marilyn French , Adrienne Rich ’s Of Woman Born, and In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens by Alice Walker . In the 1980s writing about motherhood became even more transgressive and imaginative, with Beloved by Toni Morrison , The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood , and Nights at the Circus by Angela Carter . The early 2000s saw an explosion in nonfiction, including accounts by Rachel Cusk and Anne Enright. And on and on, up to the present day, where no matter how much is written about motherhood, it feels as though there is still more to say. Three novels published recently have come the closest so far to giving me what I craved: The Nursery by Szilvia Molnar, Soldier Sailor by Claire Kilroy , and Reproduction by Louisa […]

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