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Mother Ship by Francesca Segal
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Mother Ship

'Heart-wrenching, heart-warming and heartfelt' Adam Kay, author of This is Going to Hurt
Due to publisher restrictions, this audiobook is unavailable for purchase in your selected country.
Narrator Francesca Segal

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Length 5 hours 10 minutes
Language English
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Random House presents the audiobook edition of Mother Ship, written and read by Francesca Segal.

‘Heart-wrenching, heart-warming and heartfelt – Mother Ship is a beautifully crafted, warts-and-all love letter to our wonderful NHS’ Adam Kay, author of This is Going to Hurt


‘Our greatest gift to one another is this: each woman here has been swept out by a riptide, pulled far from the current of normal motherhood. Apart and all together in this space, our odd craft, we are drawn back into the folds of the unremarkable.’


After her identical twin girls were born ten weeks prematurely, Francesca Segal finds herself sitting vigil in the ‘mother ship’ of neonatal intensive care, all romantic expectations of new parenthood obliterated. Her gripping diary of those months combines the tenderness of a love poem with the compulsive pace of a thriller. As each day brings a fresh challenge for her and her babies, Francesca makes a temporary life among a band of mothers who are vivid, fearless, and inspiring, taking care not only of their children but of one another.

MOTHER SHIP is an intimate, raucous, sublime and electrifying memoir. It is a hymn to the sustaining power of women’s friendship, and a loving celebration of the two small girls – and their mother – who defy the odds.

Francesca Segal is an award-winning writer and journalist. Her first novel, The Innocents, won the 2012 Costa First Novel Award, the 2012 National Jewish Book Award for Fiction, the 2013 Sami Rohr Prize, and a Betty Trask Award. Her most recent novel, The Awkward Age (‘smart, soulful and compelling’, Nick Hornby) was published in 2017.

Francesca Segal is an award-winning writer and journalist. Her first novel, The Innocents, won the 2012 Costa First Novel Award, the 2012 National Jewish Book Award for Fiction, the 2013 Sami Rohr Prize, and a Betty Trask Award. Her most recent novel, The Awkward Age (‘smart, soulful and compelling’, Nick Hornby) was published in 2017.

Illustration of person sitting

Shop small, give big!

With credit bundles, you choose the number of credits and your recipient picks their audiobooks—all in support of local bookstores.

Start gifting
Phone showing make the switch message

Limited-time offer

Get two free audiobooks!

Now’s a great time to shop indie. When you start a new one credit per month membership supporting local bookstores with promo code SWITCH, we’ll give you two bonus audiobook credits at sign-up.

Sign up today

Reviews

A heart-wrenching insight into what must have been such a fragile, overwhelming and terrifying time - yet there’s humour in there too. Beautiful [Segal] writes with delicate eloquence, combining passion and comic understatement so deftly that this feels the only way the book could have been written… I don’t think I’ve turned the pages so urgently in a book about motherhood before A beautiful memoir: wise, moving and profoundly humane. Segal writes with such exquisite clarity that each word is a gift, each sentence a votive offering. Mother Ship moved me to tears, but it also taught me the unassailable power of decency and kindness when life is at its most fragile and vulnerable. A book that left me changed for having read it As gripping as a thriller and as moving as a love story A compelling and emotionally taut exploration of what it means to be a parent in unexpected and challenging circumstances... The pages of Mother Ship are filled with love, anguish, despair and hope in the face of adversity. As a memoir, it is both insightful and moving; as a diary of 56 days in neonatal care, it is an exquisitely written paean to motherhood Expand reviews
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