Motherhood

Starred review from February 26, 2018
The subject of the new novel from Heti (How Should a Person Be?) is neither birth nor child-rearing, but the question of whether to want a child, which the unnamed narrator calls “the greatest secret I keep from myself.” To find the answer, she practices techniques cribbed from the I Ching, consults a psychic and Tarot cards, contemplates her mother’s experiences as a woman, counts her periods, and considers freezing her eggs. In the meantime, she and her partner, Miles, are going through a rough patch, only partly due to her indecision, which is exacerbated by visits with her friends (all of whom seem to have newborn babies), recurrent and bittersweet fantasies of raising a family, and her knowledge that she is reaching the end of the window when maternity is possible. A book of sex (the real, unsensational kind), mood swings, and deep feminist thought, this volume is essentially a chronicle of vacillating ruminations on this big question. Although readers shouldn’t go in expecting clean-cut epiphanies, this lively, exhilaratingly smart, and deliberately, appropriately frustrating affair asks difficult questions about women’s responsibilities and desires, and society’s expectations.

Author/narrator Sheila Heti offers an honest account of the impact of motherhood and the decisions that go with it. She uses the stories of others and her own candid thoughts on whether or not to have children. In a clear and contemplative tone, Heti boldly confronts positive and negative aspects of motherhood, its effects on individuality and expression, and the possibilities inherent in not having children. Although she often sounds meek, her personal thoughts and analysis on the idea of motherhood read like a diary filled with innovative points of view and amusing anecdotes. In her honest and intimate work, Heti attempts to answer her own internal questions on what a woman gives up and gains, depending on which path she takes. D.Z. � AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine