Customer Reviews

A Life's Work: On Becoming a Mother

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

I spent a long time reading and re-reading Cusk's introduction. In fact, I spent a whole lot more time with the introduction than the rest of the book. [There was much in the book proper that didn't resonate, though through and through I admired her brave straightforwardness.] This said, the introduction spoke to me in no uncertain terms, and it was quite a relief to find someone who could so eloquently express some of the feelings and changes that I, and presumably others -- though perhaps not the majority -- experienced after the birth of my two children.

Unlike Cusk, never did I mull at length over the question of "having children" nor did I view it as anything other than something exciting - something that would enhance my life, my story so to speak. So what was it about this book, even over Lammott's "Operating Instructions", that I found validating? Just this: the fact that precisely because she had a child, her "appetite" for living - for wanting to live - was "insatiable". And even though in the same breath she also delves into her loss of freedom(s), I'm happy to set that aside for now.

In her marvelous introduction she states three truths that I find incontrovertible: 1) "A day spent at home caring for a child could not be more different from a day spent working in an office. Whatever their relative merits, they are days spent on opposite sides of the world." 2) "Another person has existed in her, and after their birth they live within the jurisdiction of her consciousness. When she is with them she is not herself; when she is without them she is not herself; and so it is as difficult to leave your children as it is to stay with them." And, above all, 3) "My experience of reading, indeed of culture, was profoundly changed by having a child, in the sense that I found the concept of art and expression far more involving and necessary, far more human in its drive to bring forth and create, than I once did." It is, overwhelmingly, her third experience - that from having children the desire to do, to contribute, and to create -- in whatever form, increases dramatically, and not the reverse, not the mother-subverts-desires-and-needs-to-all-ruling child. The cost of this book was covered just by reading the first ten pages. It was a sanctuary.

Even if you dislike her perspective, it's worth a read precisely because Cusk makes you think and the prose simple and elegant. I think I'd advise others to try to get through it a) before the baby arrives (it's pretty dense at times, though other reviewers disagree) or b) if you have a colicky one and think you might lose your mind or have lost it. She more than ably captures the lesser discussed ways that the birth of a child can impact and change not just a mother, but a woman.

I couldn't wait to read this book because 1) I really enjoy Rachel Cusk's novels and 2) I had just become a new mother.

I was not disappointed--Rachel tells it like it is. She talks about all the difficult and ambivalent feelings of becoming a mother that most of us have kept to ourselves.

The regret and the irrationality, the pride and protectiveness, the "out of body" experience that nobody can prepare you for--Rachel describes it all. With a great sense of humor and humanity, this book helped me make sense of my own experience of new motherhood.

I was not familiar with Ms.Cusk's work prior to reading this book. I am a new mother and A Life's Work was recommended to me.
Her voice is one that is not heard in books about motherhood. My thougths echoed in her words.
Pregnancy and motherhood has been humbling, humiliating and exhausting. I love my daughter but I never could have anticipated the emotional journey I was embarking on.
Rachel Cusk does not put a pretty pink wash on everything. It is a clean true voice.

I recommend this book to any woman trying to find where she has gotten lost in her life.

This is a starkly honest, almost poetically written, book that made me both cringe and laugh. It will be most enjoyed by a very cerebral reader who has experienced some disappointment in birth or mothering an infant (e.g., postpartum depression, inability to breastfeed, unexpected C-section). I would not recommend it for pregnant women or cheerful people who are intent on only seeing the best in a situation. This is mothering at its worst, though infused with love. The section on men who blow the cover on women who hide the difficulties in mothering is very humorous and worth reading. For those who wonder why the author couldn't cope better, this section describes the sort of conspiracy among mothers that prevents total honesty. At any rate, it's very well-written and will elicit nods of recognition and relief from those who've "been there." You know who you are.

Rachel Cusk's A Life's Work is an insightful, honest, and sometimes hilarious account of pregnancy and early motherhood. The author tells the story of her own metamorphosis from independent entity to "motherbaby" unit in rough chronological order: from the alarmist literature of pregnancy, which "bristles with threats and the promise of reprisal" for expectant mothers who violate dietary prescriptions; to the propaganda of natural childbirth advocates ("Some women find birth the most intensely pleasurable experience of their lives"), those souls who maintain that a procedure akin to, say, squeezing a cantaloupe out of one's anus can be rendered nearly pain-free, indeed "pleasurable", by the simple adoption of an embarrassing breathing technique; to a mother's shocking, sudden immersion into an alien world of sleeplessness and isolation. (The immediacy of the metamorphosis is brought home to the author soon after she delivers her daughter by caesarian: "Do you want to try putting her to the breast? the midwife enquires as I am wheeled from the operating theatre. I look at her as if she has just asked me to make her a cup of tea, or tidy up the room a bit. I still inhabit that other world in which, after operations, people are pitied and looked after and left to recuperate." )

Cusk's account is a quick read, her prose very often elegant. She hits a number of nails squarely on the head--in her descriptions of the constant demands made on breastfeeding mothers, for example, or the drama and tension inherent in bringing a baby out into the public, or one's cautious anticipation of freedom when it looks like the kid may finally sleep. She talks about the parents' eventual containment in a single, safe room once the baby changes "from rucksack to escaped zoo animal," an alteration in lifestyle that expectant parents, reading the standard parenting books, would not likely anticipate. Cusk describes, perfectly, the "mess and endemic domestic chaos" of a child-occupied house, "which no amount of work appears to eradicate." And she details for the non-parent, wont to lie in of a Saturday morning, what weekends are like for parents: "What the outside world refers to as 'the weekend' is a round trip to the ninth circle of hell for parents.... You are woken on a Saturday morning at six or seven o'clock by people getting into your bed. They cry or shout loudly in your ear. They kick you in the stomach, in the face."

Cusk is at her best when describing parenthood in scenes such as the above. Less successful are the more philosophical passages of the book (the female is "a world steeped in its own mild, voluntary oppression, a world at whose fringes one may find intersections to the real: to particular kinds of unhappiness, or discrimination, or fear, or to a whole realm of existence both past and present that grows more individuated and indeterminate and inarticulatable as time goes by") and the strange inclusion and discussion of parenthood-related literary passages culled, for example, from Jane Eyre and Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth.

A lot of people could benefit from reading Cusk's account. New mothers will find solace, perhaps, in its pages, validation of their own feelings of isolation and resentment. Working fathers ought to read it, so they can better understand the complaints of their shut-in wives, for whom "work is considered an easy, attractive option." And the childless friends of parents will find the book a highly readable explanation of what is happening in their friends' lives.

Reviewed by Debra Hamel, author of Trying Neaira: The True Story of a Courtesan's Scandalous Life in Ancient Greece

I won't lie, I have never had a child. Nevertheless, the future possibility is there. I read this memoir only because it was assigned for a literature class I am taking. The only reason I didn't make a big stink about having to do so was because I had already read Cusk's "The Country Life," which was brilliant on a number of different levels.
I must confess that I am surprised at some of the earlier reviewers who gave this book a bad or unfavorable rating. I don't like to be presumptuous, but it seems like most of them were just pissed because it did not make them feel all warm and fuzzy inside. This book was not the first case in which I have heard of women finding new motherhood to be something akin to the ninth circle of hell. The problem is, people think it is some kind of taboo to say (or write) aloud that you have fantasies about killing your kid (not literally of course!)
The fact of the matter is this: Rachel Cusk is perhaps one of the best contemporary writers going. She is a smart woman and a smart writer. If you want a peaches and cream how-to manual, run the other way. However, if you want a brutally honest and often times humorous look at the trials and tribulations of new motherhood, pick it up and give it a try. She might rant a bit about the unfairness of new motherhood at times, but her adoring love for her daughter is blatantly clear. Anyone who claims never to have had such chaotic feelings is likely lying to herself.

It would be an understatement to say that I love this book. I have found in Cusk's voice a place that I can rest in. My son, now five, is amazing, but my own birth as a mother was frought with questions, uncertainty, loneliness. Oh how I wish I had found this book. As I read I am brought back to the early days of motherhood.

I cried when I read that once her daughter's colicky cries ended she realized her baby had gone through yet another birth. And what mattered was not how well Cusk performed her mothering duties - but that she had been there throughout her daughter's crying and pain. She realizes that this presence above all is ultimately what it means to be a mother.

Motherhood is so polticized - just look at the reviews here - and Cusk is a breath of fresh air in a landscape of literature the is overly sentimental and awash in banality. She perfectly portrays how judgemental we are about mothers. It's a damned if you do damned if you don't world. I love reading stories of moms who triumphed.

Of course the book is stream of consciousness - it perfectly mimics the experience of early motherhood when time itself is not linear any longer and you no longer know who you are.

I loved her forays into literature - it's as if her struggle to integrate these two aspects of herself is laid bare for all of us to see - and I would hope sympathisize with. Literature is her scripture that she uses to make meaning and to find her place in the world of mothers.

She said in the beginning to the book - that she was not going to write about her husband. So I was not surprised that she didn't mention him often.

This is a book for those who are thoughtful reflective and willing to be open and honest about this most amazing yet challenging experience of motherhood. It's not for the faint hearted, but neither is motherhood.

This book is a well written account of the feelings of having a child enter your life. It is not a guide, not an inspirational work, etc. Rachel Cusk describes how life-changing it was for her to have a new baby. It will upset some readers because she does not fill the book with sentimental descriptions of new baby smell, etc. Many of the details were easy for me to relate to ...like realizing that for parents with children there simply are no more "weekends". I would recommend this to all potential moms who really want to know how it might be.

Rachel Cusk is the first writer I know of to describe how disorienting it is to become a mother. She doesn't complain, but she articulates the strangeness of the experience and brought back vivid memories for me. Learning to nurse is a challenge -- it only LOOKS natural! Like her I had a colicy baby, which everyone treats as if it is a benign condition while you as the mother are faced with a fiercely inconsolable child. She describes the oddness of arriving home from the hospital with the baby, a new person totally dependent on you, and looking around at your home that encompasses your former life, the life that is gone forever. And the common feeling pre-baby, that life will continue as it is and the baby will fit in, is shown as it changes, as Rachel can't leave her child for an evening out without calling so often that she is finally forced to return home to her screaming child.
When a mother says, "Why doesn't anyone tell you what it's really like?" she should be given this book.

Rachel Cusk certainly doesn't make motherhood sound appealing, and I thank her for that. I've always sensed parents don't tell the whole truth about having children, but Cusk seems to be an exception. She blows the lid of what she calls the "Darwinian" conspiracy of silence concerning just how difficult it can be. Sure, it's solipsistic, but it's not intended as a childcare manual. It's a fascinating study of how becoming a mother dramatically changes a woman's identity.