February 15, 2010 by blue milk
Anne Enright’s richly observed and deftly handled Making Babies: Stumbling into Motherhood.
The very dark and very brilliant A Life’s Work: On Becoming a Mother by Rachel Cusk.
And Anne Lamott’s amazing Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son’s First Year set the original benchmark.
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blue milk 
Right! Will focus on fiction writing then.
I must read the Enright – I recently read her short stories about love and they were delightful.
I so agree with you about Enright’s being fabulous. Huge fan of her work (which is also a significant part of my dissertation research). One (of the many) things I like about _Making Babies_ is how you can nibble your way through it. You can get through a section or two in a breastfeeding session.
I wonder how the digital age has affected our attention spans– and how the mommy blog revolution will change our expectations about published memoirs.
I’ll be adding the later two to my to-read list.
If you want an equally exceptional fatherhood memoir, I recommend Madeleine’s World: the biography of a three year old.
I am a fan of Anne Enright and Rachel Cusk, but haven’t read either for some reason. Will rectify.
Hey, thanks for the recommendation. Want.
I loved the Anne Enright and read Rachel Cusk, although I didn’t enjoy it as much. Parts of it really resonated with me, but by the end I was finding it too much of a slog – it just felt a bit unremitting, and whilst I know mothering is a bit like that too, possibly I wasn’t in the right place to be reading it. I haven’t read the third book, but I’ll add it to my ‘must read’ list – thanks!
I recently finished OPERATING INSTRUCTIONS and absolutely loved it. Another one I’d recommend is Michelle Herman’s THE MIDDLE OF EVERYTHING.
If you’re interested in a lyrical-baring-of-the-soul “momoir,” I’d like to suggest Carmen Giménez Smith’s forthcoming Bring Down the Little Birds http://www.uapress.arizona.edu/BOOKS/bid2239.htm. Would you like to see a copy?
I agree that brilliant authors have put out amazing work on this subject, but I also think there are many more experiences out there that we’ll continue to uncover as more and more stories are told.
[…] When Rachel Cusk wrote about motherhood in A Life’s Work: On Becoming a Mother, I felt heard. It wasn’t my story, exactly, but it was closer to my story of the early days of motherhood than others were writing. This time she is writing about her divorce. It isn’t my story either, but I suspect there will be much here to embrace for those of us attempting this strange dance of domestic equality with our partners: Call yourself a feminist, he said. […]
[…] of my most favourite motherhood writers ever are writing, for want of a better word.. sequels. I’m very excited about this. First […]
[…] I have been reading Anne Enright’s Making Babies, a very beautiful collection of essays, recommended by Blue Milk. And I have been knitting. I’ve started one more vest for the little guy. It’s quite […]