Motherhood

Likely to become the defining literary work on the subject. * Guardian *Probing, psychologically unafraid, witty. – Catherine Taylor * Financial Times *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. – Dwight Garner * The New York Times *Brave and funny… Heti 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 *A brilliant, radical, and moving book, it is sure to cause the cultural riot her earlier work has … There’s a new quality to Heti’s writing in Motherhood. The only way I can describe it is tenderness … Beautiful … Surprising. – Claudia Dey * The Paris Review *Heti thinks clearly and originally – Adam Kirsch * Times Literary Supplement, Books of the Year *Motherhood confronts the philosophical questions raised by childbearing and womanhood… 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 *Motherhood is a poetic, innovative book. It is groundbreaking in its fluidity, in its recognition of the unrecognizability of desire, and in its scrutiny of expectation… she introduces a critical, exhilarating freedom. – Rebecca Watson * Spectator *Motherhood is subtitled A Novel, though it’s one in which the boundaries between fiction and memoir are porous and constantly shifting… Heti is experimenting with literary form even as she wrestles with the form her adult life should take – Stephanie Merritt * Guardian *Motherhood is a fiercely intelligent and probing read that delves deep into the fundamentals of procreating, motherhood and what it means to be a woman in today’s world. – Sarah Gilmartin * Irish Times *

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.