The Best, Most Awful Job

Motherhood is life-changing. Joyful. Disorientating. Overwhelming. Intense on every level. It’s the best, most awful job.

From dating as a single mum to adopting your baby, becoming a stepmother to enduring a miscarriage, there are a million different ways to be a mother. Yet some voices are still too often heard above others. It’s time to broaden
the conversation.

From the introduction:
‘We need to talk about all the different ways of being a mother. The true, dirty business of motherhood is a constellation of experiences. That is the only universal: everybody finds their own way through. At its core, this is a book about love. It’s a snapshot of reality, told in twenty dazzling voices; the best job in the world, and simultaneously the most awful. Because motherhood is everything at once: pleasure and pain, anger and tenderness, light and shade. In short, true love.’

"Poignant, funny, sensitive, but most importantly, heart-stoppingly true. This is an outstanding collection of essays, from some of the finest writers, which gets right to the dark heart of what it really means to be a mother." - Clover Stroud, author of My Wild and Sleepless Nights

"All the pain, power and privilege of being a mother is here in these tales of stepparenting; being unable to conceive; having six children; single parenthood; and of how race, class, disability, religion and sexuality affect our perceptions of motherhood" - Caroline Sanderson, The Bookseller Editor's Choice
'A wonderful anthology. I enjoyed it so much - the honesty,intelligence, fury and tenderness of the essays; and, importantly andrefreshingly, the range of voices and stories it contains.' - Liz Berry, authorof The Republic of Motherhood 

'This is the kind of book that couldwell make a difference to someone's life ... every mother should readit.' - Laura Pearson, author of I Wanted You to Know 

'If I had added a Post-it Note to everysentence in this book that made me laugh, wince in recognition, or faintly wellup, I would have turned it into a paper porcupine.' - Ceri Radford, Independent

Katherine May is an author of fiction and memoir whose titles include the acclaimed memoirs Wintering (2020) and The Electricity of Every Living Thing (2018), The Whitstable High Tide Swimming Club, The 52 Seductions, Burning Out, and Ghosts & Their Uses. Her journalism and essays have appeared in a range of publications including The Times, Good Housekeeping, Aeon and Cosmopolitan. She lives in Whitstable, Kent, with her husband and son.

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