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World's Best Mother

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Book Hero Magic crafted this summary to help describe this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Summary
World's Best Mother follows a thirty-five-year-old writer's emotional and often challenging journey through infertility, IVF treatments, and eventually motherhood to two daughters. The narrative blends personal anecdotes with imaginative storytelling and social commentary, exploring pregnancy, parenting, marriage, and adultery.

The narrator critically engages with historical and cultural voicesβ€”from Lucy, the famed hominid, to philosophers and literary figuresβ€”offering a clever and insightful critique of motherhood’s myths and realities. This auto-fictional tale intertwines humour, love, and horror, revealing the tension between the demands of parenting and the writer’s creative ambitions.
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Format: Paperback / softback
$2999
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Book Hero Magic created this recommendation. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! IS THIS YOUR NEXT READ?

This book will appeal to readers interested in contemporary women’s fiction, motherhood narratives, and works that thoughtfully examine social expectations. It suits those who appreciate reflective, literary storytelling blending personal experience with cultural critique.

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World's Best Mother is the journey of a writer through infertility, pregnancy, the mothering of small children, marriage, and an affair, told through a mix of personal anecdotes, imagination, and social commentary.

Book Hero Magic formatted this description to make it easier to read. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Description

A thirty-five-year-old writer decides she wants to have children. Rounds of IVF treatments and several years later, she has two daughters and sits down to write this book.

World's Best Mother is a sublime journey through pregnancy, the mothering of small children, marriage, and an affair, which unfolds in a heady mix of anecdote, imagination, and social commentary.

Clever and insightful, the narrator examines the myth, but also the scam, of motherhood, openly dialoguing with voices of the past that in one way or another have fuelled her condition as a woman: from the legendary hominid Lucyβ€”'the mother of humanity'β€”to Cinderella, passing through Plato, Mother Teresa, Darwin, Maupassant, and Simone de Beauvoir along the way. Humour, love, and horror converge in this lively auto-fictional battle between the intensity of child rearing and the writer trying to fight her way out.

Book Details

INFORMATION

ISBN: 9781642860726

Publisher: World Editions

Format: Paperback / softback

Date Published: 06 April 2021

Country: United States

Imprint: World Editions

Illustration: Illustrations

Contributors:

  • Translated by Katie Whittemore

Audience: General / adult

DIMENSIONS

Width: 139.0mm

Height: 215.0mm

Weight: 250g

Pages: 224

About the Author

NURIA LABARI was born in Santander and is a writer and journalist. She has written for El Mundo, as well as Telecinco, where she was the editor in chief for web content. She is currently a frequent contributor to El Pas. Her short-story collection Los borrachos de mi vida ("The Drunkards in My Life") won the seventh Premio Narrativa de Caja de Madrid in 2009. In 2016 she published her first novel, Cosas que brillan cuando estn rotas ("Things That Shine When Broken"). World's Best Mother is her latest work.

KATIE WHITTEMORE translates from the Spanish and lives in Valencia, Spain. She is the translator of Four by Four (Open Letter Books, 2020) by Sara Mesa, and her work has appeared in Two Lines, The Arkansas International, The Common Online, Gulf Coast Magazine Online, The Brooklyn Rail, and InTranslation. Current projects include novels by Spanish authors Sara Mesa, Javier Serena, and Aliocha Coll (for Open Letter Books), and Aroa Moreno Durn (for Tinder Press).

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