Sheila Heti

In her late thirties, when her friends are asking when they will become mothers, the narrator of Heti's novel considers whether she will do so at all. In a narrative spanning several years, casting among the influence of her peers, partner, and her duties to her forbearers, she struggles to make a wise and moral choice

A Novel

Motherhood

taylor miles hopkins

It's just the woman—the woman who doesn't have a child is looked at with the same aversion and reproach as a grown man who doesn't have a job. Like she has something to apologize for. Like she's not entitled to pride.

Do you ever feel like you cannot grow beyond your mother? So it's wonderful when your mother climbs one step higher on the ladder from where she had been standing before.

…I felt different, as though floor I could choose the happiness of that smiling face, or the unhappiness of my mother. Not everything had to be so heavy all the time. But how deep inside me my mother's face was! How it lay in the basement, the unfinished barn, of my soul so close, right there.

There is always someone ready to step into the path of a woman's freedom, sensing that she is not yet a mother, so tries to make her into one. There will always be one man or another, or her mother or her father, or some young woman or some young man who steps into the bright and shimmering path of her freedom, and adopts themselves as that woman's child, forcing her to be their mother…The world is full of desperate people, lonely people and half-broken people, unsolved people and needy people…who need your advice at every turn, or who just want to talk and get a drink—and seduce you into being their mother. It's hard to detect this is even happening, bu before you realize it—it's happened.

In my dream last night, I heard the words, If you want to know what your life is, destroy everything and move away and see what builds up again. If what builds up a second time is much the same as the first, then your life is pretty much as it could be. Things couldn't be much different from that.

To go along with what nature demands and to resist it—both are really beautiful—impressive and difficult in their ovwn ways. To battle nature and to submit to nature, both feel very worthy. They both seem entirely valuable.

Desires build up lives, he warned. He feared that if he began to follow his desires, he would end up buried underneath whatever they collected, until his whole self disappeared.

The time-span of a woman's life is about thirty years. Apparently, during these thirty years—fourteen to forty-four—everything must be done. She must find a man, make babies, start and accelerate her career, avoid diseases, and collect enough money in a private account so that her husband can't gamble their life's savings away. Thirty years is not enough time to live a whole life! It's not enough time to do all of everything….

All the things I neglected to do because I refused to believe, fundamentally, that first and foremost I was female.

Time is always ticking for Women. Whereas men, apparently, live in a timeless realm. In the dimension of men, there is no just space. Imagine living in the realm of space, not time!

Maybe motherhood means honoring one's mother. Many people do that by becoming mothers. They do it by having children. They do it by imitating what their mother has done. By imitating and honoring what their mother has done, this makes them a mother. 

I also am imitating what my mother has done. I am also honoring my mother, no less than the person whose mother feels honored by an infant grandchild. I am honoring my mother no less. I do as my mother did, and for the same reasons: we work to give our mother's life meaning.

It does not mean that to write this book, I need an infinity amount of time, but rather that I need to access infinity in time. Infinity is not a duration of time, it is a quality of time.

Maybe this is what happens with children, also, which is perhaps partly why people want to have more than one. The baby's perfect innocence and purity is gone, corrupted as they grow. The same thing happens with art. It starts off in a state of perfect innocence, and you along with it.

Putting the book down, I realized that throughout most of history, it was enough for men that women existed to give birth and raise them. And if a woman gave birth to a girl, well then, with luck the girl would grow up to give birth to a man. It seemed to me like all my worrying about not being a mother came down to this history—this implication that a woman is not an end in herselt. She is a means to a man, who will grow up to be an end in himself, and do something in the world. While woman is a passageway through which a man might come.

True perspective is pretty much impossible. The buildings do not sway in the wind, so it's harder for our ideas to sway. You cannot look at a building for several hours, while in nature you can look at anything for several hours, because nature is alive and ever-changing.

Life involves making a decision so the spirits can rush in. But a decision takes knowledge and faith, which I lack.

Art is eternity backwards. Art is written for one's ancestors, even if those ancestors are elected, like our literary mothers and fathers are. We write for them. Children are eternity forwards. My sense of eternity is backwards through time. The farther back in time l can go, the deeper into eternity I feel I can pierce.

My brother feels it was an unfair burden placed on him to have been forced to live without having been asked. I feel the oppositethat life is a beautiful and incredibly rare gift whose debt I will forever be in—and that I must spend my days paying back this debt.

 Where do I get this idea of my indebtedness from? And who am I paying it back to? And why must it be the only thing in my life—my life paying it back? Could having children be a way of repaying the debt? For some it must be, but it doesnt feel that Way to me. I know how hard it is to have a child, but for me it Would feel like an indulgence—an escape. I don't feel I deserve those pleasures. Having a child does not relate to the duties that feel bound to my life.

… I wondered if not having children was more like creating a context, while having a baby was more like making a thing. As with an artist who makes objects to sell, it's easy to reward someone for having a child—the meaning of their life is so apparent in its solidness and worth.

Men want to control women 's bodies by forbidding them from abortions, while women try to control other women's bodies by pressuring them to have kids. 

To find our value and greatness in some place apart from mothering, as a man must find his worth and greatness in some place apart from domination and violence, and the more women and men who do this, the better off the world will be? Miles said we value warring and dominating men, the same way we revere the mother. The egoism of child-bearing is like the egoism of colonizing a country—both carry the wish of imprinting yourself on the world, and making it over with your values, and in your image. How assaulted I feel when I hear that a person has had three children, four, five, more…It feels greedy, overbearing and rude—an arrogant spreading of those selves. 

Yet perhaps I am not so different from such people—spreading myself over so many pages, with my dream of my pages spreading over the world.

I don't have anything anymore. I don't have my work .. my daughter is her own person. She doesn't belong to me.

 In that moment, I saw it was true: her daughter was something apart from her, not her possession or belonging at all.

A child is not a combination of you and your partner, but a reality all its own, separate and uniquea distinct point of consciousness in the world. I don't think this was something I ever felt that my body, my life, belonged to me.

What Ineed is so small: to eradicate any sentimentality from my feelings and to look at what is. Today, I defined sentimental to myself as a feeling about the idea of a feeling. And it seemed to me that my inclinations towards motherhood had a lot to with the idea of a feeling about motherhood.

If a decision in the mind doesnt make balbies, why do I spend so much time thinking about it? We are judged by what happens to us as though our deciding made it happen. A lot of time is wasted in thinking about whether to have a child, when the thinking is such a small part of it…

Cassie B

I think I was prepared to dislike this (I don’t know why?) but honestly, the only thing I wanted to do when I finished it was begin reading it again. Such an important book for more reasons that I can properly articulate.

Meghan Navoy

Jeannette Ordas

I wasn’t really into this novel that reads like a memoir. Her boyfriend was terrible and I couldn’t relate to the way she made decisions (flipping coins, seeing psychics) or even the entire question of the book. Except for one afternoon running into an acquaintance with her newborn baby, I have never felt the baby motherhood urge. Not my bag. 2.5 stars.

This is a book everyone should read whether they want kids or not, have kids or not, it is just a book every person should read. I finished it late last night in tears, seeing so much of the same generational trauma that happens between mother and daughter and her daughter and back and so forth. It is free form and weaves in history and trauma and the life cycle of not just women but of many things in nature as well. It's an astounding singular book. I leave you with a thought from the book: 

"many other people their life's meaning. There can be sadness at not living out a more universal story - the suppose life cycle - how out of one life cycle another cycle is supposed to come. But when out of your life, no new cycle comes, what does that feel like? It feels like nothing. Yet there is a bit of a let-down feeling when the great things that happen in the lives of others - you don't actually want those things for yourself."

Judith Van Laere

Shelby Doherty

Likes:
- Really enjoyed the super 8 ball style coin flips.
- Really good discussion on the choice to choose on whether to have kids or not.
- Especially enjoyed the bit towards the end regarding her mental health and her decision to choose medication to help her through it. Very medication positive (which seems to not be the norm) and is something I would like to reflect on further to better understand my own personal thoughts and feelings about this.
- Enjoyed that this very much seemed like it could be the true author's own personal experience. Hard to perceive the distinction between fiction and non-fiction.
- Enjoyed the remark that if a gay couple doesn't have children no one says that they are missing out on life because they don't have children. Very interesting that this seems to only affect women in straight relationships.
- Really enjoyed the author's narration on the audiobook. Felt very natural and easy to listen to.

Dislikes:
- I'm not sure how enjoyable reading the coin parts would be if physically reading the book, but I did really enjoy the way it comes across in the audiobook.
- Personally, this book just sort of stressed me out. A subject that has so much societal pressure tied to it, and I feel like I am getting to the stage in my life where I am one now of the recipients of this pressure.

Donald

I loved Heti's 'How Should A Person Be?', but I have no idea what to say about this book.

Okay, I'll try to say something. Whenever I would rolled my eyes at How Should a Person Be?, the next page or paragraph would answer the question or criticism in my head. That didn't happen in 'Motherhood'. Two of the main literary devices/allusions (flipping coins and the story of Jacob/Israel wrestling God) didn't really work. I wish I could unsee the sex descriptions (never sleep with a writer). I both loathed and felt sorry for her boyfriend.

Yes, contemporary dating/sex/cohabitation culture sounds awful, especially for women, but I didn't need another book illustrating how frustrating life is when devoid of tradition and transcendent meaning (that's my reading – such an illustration is NOT the goal of the book).

That said, the near total absence of politics and blunt discussions of male/female difference are interesting, and I'm sure I'll read whatever Heti's next book is.

Louise 

The conversation went on for another half hour, before this man's girlfriend, who had not said much of anything until then, remarked, Being a woman, you can't just say you don't want a child. You have to have some big plan or idea of what you're going to do instead. And it better be something great. And you had better be able to tell it convincingly - before it even happens - what the arc of your life will be.

**A Daily Telegraph, Financial Times, Irish Times, Refinery29, TLS and The White Review Book of the Year 2018** A provocative novel about the desire and duty to procreate, from the author of the critically acclaimed How Should A Person Be? Motherhood treats one of the most consequential decisions of early adulthood - whether or not to have children - with the intelligence, wit and originality that have won Sheila Heti international acclaim. Having reached an age when most of her peers are asking themselves when they will become mothers, Heti's narrator considers, with the same urgency, whether she will do so at all. Over the course of several years, under the influence of her partner, body, family, friends, mysticism and chance, she struggles to make a moral and meaningful choice. In a compellingly direct mode that straddles the forms of the novel and the essay, Motherhood raises radical and essential questions about womanhood, parenthood, and how - and for whom - to live.

Jade Flynn

Everything positive about this novel came paired with a negative. Whilst I feel that sometimes the book suffered from an undercurrent of first-world problem syndrome, I do think it is an honest reflection of the uncertainty that many women feel towards motherhood in contemporary society. I've never read a piece of autofiction before which blurs the real with the imagined so it was an interesting experience for me as a reader, but on the other hand, I felt that this could've worked better as either or - a memoir or fiction. It felt a bit disorientated and unsystematic at times. Heti clearly has the ability to write genuinely complex feelings down in such an elegant and accessible way that it's truly inspiring. But it did get a bit repetitive towards the end because it was rehashing the same thoughts and feelings, again and again. Overall, I do see why people are loving Motherhood as it deserves to be loved by the right reader at the right time.

Ana Couto

First off, I’d like to thank @booksturnyouon on Bookstagram for putting this book on my radar several months ago when she posted about it and gave a glowing review! I was instantly intrigued by the concept of Sheila Heti’s MOTHERHOOD—a book that “straddles the form of the novel and the essay” while exploring questions about womanhood, parenthood, feminism, family, love, and most importantly, how to make decisions that go against the status quo. Although I’m only 23 and don’t plan on having kids anytime soon, motherhood IS something I think about from time to time, especially because—as a woman—there’s so much pressure to want children in our society. In my opinion, Heti perfectly captures this internal conflict that many women go through. She’s an incredible writer and I couldn’t recommend this book enough.

Tabea Lüth

From the author of How Should a Person Be? (“one of the most talked-about books of the year”—Time Magazine) and the New York Times Bestseller Women in Clothes comes a daring novel about whether to have children. In Motherhood, Sheila Heti asks what is gained and what is lost when a woman becomes a mother, treating the most consequential decision of early adulthood with the candor, originality, and humor that have won Heti international acclaim and made How Should A Person Be? required reading for a generation. In her late thirties, when her friends are asking when they will become mothers, the narrator of Heti’s intimate and urgent novel considers whether she will do so at all. In a narrative spanning several years, casting among the influence of her peers, partner, and her duties to her forbearers, she struggles to make a wise and moral choice. After seeking guidance from philosophy, her body, mysticism, and chance, she discovers her answer much closer to home. Motherhood is a courageous, keenly felt, and starkly original novel that will surely spark lively conversations about womanhood, parenthood, and about how—and for whom—to live.

Juliana

Anastasiia

**A Daily Telegraph, Financial Times, Irish Times, Refinery29, TLS and The White Review Book of the Year 2018** A provocative novel about the desire and duty to procreate, from the author of the critically acclaimed How Should A Person Be? Motherhood treats one of the most consequential decisions of early adulthood – whether or not to have children – with the intelligence, wit and originality that have won Sheila Heti international acclaim. Having reached an age when most of her peers are asking themselves when they will become mothers, Heti’s narrator considers, with the same urgency, whether she will do so at all. Over the course of several years, under the influence of her partner, body, family, friends, mysticism and chance, she struggles to make a moral and meaningful choice. In a compellingly direct mode that straddles the forms of the novel and the essay, Motherhood raises radical and essential questions about womanhood, parenthood, and how – and for whom – to live. ‘Likely to become the defining literary work on the subject’ Guardian

Motherhood A Novel

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