Making Babies: Stumbling into Motherhood

A San Francisco Chronicle Lit Pick

"Much of the book is astonishingly funny; the rest would break your heart." —Colm Tóibín

Anne Enright is one of the most acclaimed novelists of her generation. The Gathering won the 2007 Man Booker Prize, and her follow-up novel, The Forgotten Waltz, garnered universal praise for her luminous language and deep insight into relationships.

Now, in Making Babies, Enright offers a new kind of memoir: an unapologetic look at the very personal experience of becoming a mother. With a refreshing no-nonsense attitude, Enright opens up about the birth and first two years of her children’s lives. Enright was married for eighteen years before she and her husband Martin, a playwright, decided to have children. Already a confident, successful writer, Enright continued to work in her native Ireland after each of her two babies was born. While each baby slept, those first two years of life, Enright wrote, in dispatches, about the mess, the glory, and the raw shock of motherhood.

Here, unfiltered and irreverent, are Enright’s keen reactions to the pains of pregnancy, the joys of breast milk, and the all-too-common pressures to be the “perfect” parent. Supremely observant and endlessly quizzical, Enright is never saccharine, always witty, but also deeply loving.

Already a bestseller in the UK, Making Babies brings Enright’s autobiographical writing to American readers for the first time. Tender and candid, it captures beautifully just what it’s like for a working woman to become a mother. The result is a moving chronicle of parenthood from one of the most distinctive and gifted authors writing today.
1110779535
Making Babies: Stumbling into Motherhood

A San Francisco Chronicle Lit Pick

"Much of the book is astonishingly funny; the rest would break your heart." —Colm Tóibín

Anne Enright is one of the most acclaimed novelists of her generation. The Gathering won the 2007 Man Booker Prize, and her follow-up novel, The Forgotten Waltz, garnered universal praise for her luminous language and deep insight into relationships.

Now, in Making Babies, Enright offers a new kind of memoir: an unapologetic look at the very personal experience of becoming a mother. With a refreshing no-nonsense attitude, Enright opens up about the birth and first two years of her children’s lives. Enright was married for eighteen years before she and her husband Martin, a playwright, decided to have children. Already a confident, successful writer, Enright continued to work in her native Ireland after each of her two babies was born. While each baby slept, those first two years of life, Enright wrote, in dispatches, about the mess, the glory, and the raw shock of motherhood.

Here, unfiltered and irreverent, are Enright’s keen reactions to the pains of pregnancy, the joys of breast milk, and the all-too-common pressures to be the “perfect” parent. Supremely observant and endlessly quizzical, Enright is never saccharine, always witty, but also deeply loving.

Already a bestseller in the UK, Making Babies brings Enright’s autobiographical writing to American readers for the first time. Tender and candid, it captures beautifully just what it’s like for a working woman to become a mother. The result is a moving chronicle of parenthood from one of the most distinctive and gifted authors writing today.
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Making Babies: Stumbling into Motherhood

Making Babies: Stumbling into Motherhood

by Anne Enright
Making Babies: Stumbling into Motherhood

Making Babies: Stumbling into Motherhood

by Anne Enright

eBook

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Overview

A San Francisco Chronicle Lit Pick

"Much of the book is astonishingly funny; the rest would break your heart." —Colm Tóibín

Anne Enright is one of the most acclaimed novelists of her generation. The Gathering won the 2007 Man Booker Prize, and her follow-up novel, The Forgotten Waltz, garnered universal praise for her luminous language and deep insight into relationships.

Now, in Making Babies, Enright offers a new kind of memoir: an unapologetic look at the very personal experience of becoming a mother. With a refreshing no-nonsense attitude, Enright opens up about the birth and first two years of her children’s lives. Enright was married for eighteen years before she and her husband Martin, a playwright, decided to have children. Already a confident, successful writer, Enright continued to work in her native Ireland after each of her two babies was born. While each baby slept, those first two years of life, Enright wrote, in dispatches, about the mess, the glory, and the raw shock of motherhood.

Here, unfiltered and irreverent, are Enright’s keen reactions to the pains of pregnancy, the joys of breast milk, and the all-too-common pressures to be the “perfect” parent. Supremely observant and endlessly quizzical, Enright is never saccharine, always witty, but also deeply loving.

Already a bestseller in the UK, Making Babies brings Enright’s autobiographical writing to American readers for the first time. Tender and candid, it captures beautifully just what it’s like for a working woman to become a mother. The result is a moving chronicle of parenthood from one of the most distinctive and gifted authors writing today.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780393084078
Publisher: Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date: 03/26/2012
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 208
File size: 305 KB

About the Author

Anne Enright is the author of eight novels, most recently The Wren. She has been awarded the Man Booker Prize and the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, and was named the inaugural Laureate for Irish Fiction. In 2022, Enright was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Irish Book Awards. She lives and works in Dublin.

Table of Contents

Apologies All Round 11

Breeding 15

The Glass Wall 23

Dream-Time 25

Birth 35

Milk 48

Nine Months 57

Time 74

Advice 82

Being Two 87

Groundhog Day 98

Science 107

Babies: A Breeder's Guide 120

God 120

Buggies 121

Staring 126

Home Birth 126

Wriggles 128

Naming 129

Burps 131

Hands 133

Girl / Boy 134

Crying 134

Evolution 142

Authority 143

Poo 143

Smell 144

Too Much Information 145

Baby-Talk 146

The Killing Cup 148

Kissing 151

How to Panic 151

Romance 153

The Lip of the Rug 154

By the Time You Read This, It Will be True 154

Staring, Part 2 155

What's Wrong with Velcro? 156

Unforgiven 160

Fair 163

Second Pregnancies 165

Siblings 165

Toys 166

Dirt 166

Other Mothers, Other Fathers 171

How to Get Trolleyed While Breast-Feeding 172

Entertaining 178

On Giving Birth to a Genius 178

Dreams 178

Speech 179

On Being Loved 180

It's Not About You, You Know 181

It's Not About You, You Know, Part 2 182

The Moment 183

Worry 183

Forgetting 187

What It Does 187

Oh, Mortality 190

Acknowledgements 205

What People are Saying About This

Colm Toibin

Anne Enright’s style is as sharp and brilliant as Joan Didion’s; the scope of her understanding is as wide as Alice Munro’s; her sympathy for her characters is as tender and subtle as Alice McDermott’s; her vision of Ireland is as brave and original as Edna O’Brien’s.

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