Rebecca Watson

The weight of womanhood

Heti’s narrator flips coins to decide whether or not to have a child. Or should she write a book instead?

issue 02 June 2018

  • Motherhood

    Sheila Heti

    Harvill Secker, pp. 304

‘I don’t think this was something I ever felt’, Sheila Heti writes in Motherhood — ‘that my body, my life, belonged to me.’

Heti’s narrator is childless, nearing her forties and living with her boyfriend. In semi-diaristic vignettes, she navigates the space of childlessness; the ‘sensation of life tapping its foot’.

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