A Life’s Work: On Becoming a Mother

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J’ai juste voulu être honnête’ a-t-elle répondu dans un article pour le Guardian dans lequel elle a tenté de comprendre pourquoi son livre avait attiré autant de critiques hostiles à sa sortie. Penelope Leach gives, I think, an accurate definition of postnatal depression: she says that in postnatal depression the mother believes that there is something faulty or abnormally difficult about her child.

Photograph: Vera Livchak/Getty Images View image in fullscreen ‘It does not do to be too intelligent about motherhood. Claire Messud, Guardian Books of the Year 'Cusk is not afraid to address frankly the grief for freedom lost, the despair, pain, boredom and guilt - all in the context of the mother's unspeakable love for the baby . This book is an attempt to describe something of that arrival, and of the drama of which childbirth is merely the opening scene.On and on it went, back and forth: I was accused of child-hating, of postnatal depression, of shameless greed, of irresponsibility, of pretentiousness, of selfishness, of doom-mongering and, most often, of being too intellectual. These cookies help provide information on metrics the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc.

Could she not see that it was she, in her car, that represented the very danger she congratulated herself for pointing out? Aside from the prospect of self-revelation, it demands on the part of the author a willingness to trespass on the lives of those around him or her. The more it is separated from the rest of life, the harder it gets; and yet to bring your children to your own existence, rather than move yourself to theirs, is hard too. In responding to the formal problems of the novel representing female experience she began to work additionally in non-fiction. There was me, my husband, my husband's eight-year-old daughter, and our own two children: a baby who cried passionately each time I moved out of her line of vision, and her sister, older by 15 months, whose abundant hair exactly matched the electrifying palette of autumn in the pleasure gardens that year.Even though right at this moment her own style hits me as self-conscious and pretentious, I liked the literature she quoted and what she obviously got out of this herself, and something tells me this is a book it may be rewarding to revisit in times of need. I wasn't offended or shocked by Cusk's book - I just didn't find it a very enjoyable reading experience. Just as lots of books on motherhood focus only on the beautiful aspects of having children, "A Life's Work" magnifies only the bad stuff and all the potential worst-case scenarios.

This hunger evidently goes unsatisfied, and must content itself with scraps from the table of daily news. Cusk’s story of a year of modern motherhood becomes many stories: a farewell to freedom, sleep and time; a lesson in humility and hard work; a journey to the roots of love; a meditation on madness and mortality; and most of all a sentimental education in babies, books, toddler groups, bad advice, crying, breastfeeding and never being alone.

I guess if you're open to talking about the grim reality of parenting you won't get much from this, but if you don't have access to honest conversation with other parents then this book must be a godsend. Yet I had experienced it, in a way: it was part of what I had found intolerable in the public culture of motherhood, the childcare manuals and the toddler groups, the discourse of domestic life, even the politics of birth itself. It is accepted by you that Daunt Books has no control over additional charges in relation to customs clearance.

This book is a modest approach to the theme of motherhood, written in the first heat of its subject. Rather, it is a literary masterpiece in my opinion-full of humor and honesty at the sometimes ridiculous moments that one endures when figuring out how to take care of one's own baby. Cusk separates true love, empathy and devotion to another being from the more primal bonding she found tricky from the start of her pregnancy caused by a dissociation from the (physical, mental, soul) power of womanhood afflicted upon too many of her generation. How inspiring it is to see individuals take on Herculean tasks that they know up front will require considerable time - perhaps even extending beyond their own lifetimes - just for the sheer passion of what they're doing and what they believe it can ultimately contribute to the well-being of mankind.

In fact I think it is a mark of this book's sincerity that it acknowledges the difficulty and darkness of parenting- and it's that which makes the luminous love Rachel Cusk has for her child so very moving and real. The memoir proved a breakthrough for Cusk, leading her toward the autobiographical fiction for which she is now best known. The letters and messages I have received have been deeply moving and have made me feel part of a community in these early days of my parenting journey. My definitions, of woman and of mother, remain vague, but the process continues to exert on me a real fascination. I have not said much about my particular circumstances, nor about the people with whom I live, nor about the other relationships inevitably surrounding the relationship I describe with my child.