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Motherhood

A Novel

by Sheila Heti

Narrator Sheila Heti

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Length 5 hours 16 minutes

Language English

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Bookseller recommendation

“I loved listening to Sheila Heti read this book. I don’t think I would have liked it as much had I read it on the page. Heti is certainly not for everyone, but if you like unconventionality in your books, give her work a try. Motherhood is an autofictional rumination on the question of whether or not to have a child, and the book is largely guided by the actual flipping of three coins, inspired by the I Ching. The three-coin method adds a reverent, mystical quality to the book, which itself reads like a conversational train of thought or a diary. Heti also delves into family history and inheritance, in this case Jewish Hungarian. There’s so much to ponder here.”
— Mary • Raven Book Store

Bookseller recommendation

“Sheila Heti has a way of tapping into the throes of consciousness and coming out with a precisely articulated version of how we think. Her new book, Motherhood, delves deep into the decision of whether or not to have children, while simultaneously exploring femininity, identity, and self purpose. Even if motherhood is not pertinent to your life, this book will shed light on our culture and the expectations that are bound to affect everyone at some point.”
— Courtney Flynn • Trident Booksellers & Cafe

Summary
About the author
About the narrator

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 audiobook 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 audiobook 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 audiobook that will surely spark lively conversations about womanhood, parenthood, and about how—and for whom—to live.

Fiction Fiction - Literary

Sheila Heti is the author of eleven books, including the novels Pure Colour, Motherhood, and How Should a Person Be?, which New York deemed one of the "New Classics" of the twenty-first century. 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 top book of 2018. Her books have been translated into twenty-four languages. She lives in Toronto.