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 novel 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 novel 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 novel that will surely spark lively conversations about womanhood, parenthood, and about how―and for whom―to live. Named a Best Book of the Year by: The New York Times • Vulture (#1 of 2018) • NPR • Chicago Tribune • Bustle • Lit Hub • Refinery29 • Financial Times • The Times Literary Supplement • Bookforum Top Shelf Shortlisted for the Giller Prize “Sheila Heti’s book seems likely to become the defining literary work on the subject . . . It’s hard to do justice to its complexity. This is less a book than a tapestry―a finely wrought work of delicate art.” ―Lara Feigel, The Guardian “Deeply impressive . . . The book’s focus is not doing, but thinking, and the great pleasure it offers is that of a mind reflecting, obsessively and unpredictably, on a subject so central that it leads in every direction. For in writing about motherhood, Heti is also writing about femininity and vocation, embodiment and mortality, history and freedom.” ―Adam Kirsch, The Atlantic “A provocative work that probes the new norms of femininity . . . Compelling . . . Wondrous.” ―Daphne Merkin, O Magazine “Earthy and philosophical and essential . . . Motherhood floats, as did Heti’s excellent novel How Should a Person Be? (2012), somewhere between fiction and nonfiction. It reads like an inspired monologue . . . Heti’s semi-fiction, like that of writers like Ben Lerner, Rachel Cusk and Teju Cole, among others, is dismantling our notions of what a novel should be.” ―Dwight Garner, The New York Times (named a "Top 10 of 2018") “Unique . . . By devoting so many pages to her conflicted, sometimes contradictory thought process, Heti honors the weight of this singularly assigned-female decision, and lends power to those who make it―those who choose not to have children and those who do.” ―Katie Heaney, BuzzFeed News "Goes beyond questions of genre, and could best be described as a philosophical essay in the tradition of Montaigne. As she ponders whether or not to have children, Heti thinks clearly and originally about profound issues of vocation, responsibility, identity and what it means to be true to oneself. Spending time in the company of a serious mind is one of the chief pleasures of fiction, and that is what Motherhood provides."― The Times Literary Supplement “Heti is at her best―her sharpest and funniest―when she writes about why having a child doesn’t appeal to her, cutting against saccharine commonplaces about the importance of child-rearing.” ―Elaine Blair, The New York Times Book Review “Expansive . . . Meditative and playful . . . Motherhood treats the question of whether to become a mother and what it means to take on that responsibility with the seriousness and complexity it deserves . . . Heti’s important book is a positive assertion that motherhood is not an obligatory sacrifice, a glorified institution, the cornerstone of a woman’s being. Motherhood is―or should be―a choice, with each woman accorded the freedom to decide what it means.” ―Polly Rosenwaike, San Francisco Chronicle “Utterly contagious . . . Comical and kaleidoscopic . . . In the novel’s most powerful passages, the narrator confronts the possibility of maternity by herself, wondering if a life that does not include being a mother can be defined by means other than lack . . . An inventively crafted novel about the complications of being a human being with competing or contradictory desires . . . Powerful . . . Darkly funny, but also kind of heartbreaking.” ―Kate Wolf, Los Angeles Review of Books “Searingly honest . . . In urgent, first-person prose, Heti contrasts societal expectation with personal desire . . . Starkly intimate . . . The book’s sneaky power lies in a profound question that lacks an answer: How should a mother be?” ―David Canfield, Entertainment Weekly “The title of Heti’s latest work of autofiction―a fashionable hybrid of essay, memoir, and novel