Motherhood A Novel

Sheila Heti’s Motherhood is structured as a long internal argument with herself about whether to have a child. The narrator, very close to Heti in obvious ways, uses a coin-flip oracle method drawn from the I Ching to interrogate her own ambivalence. The book runs question, answer, fragment, scene.

It won’t be for everyone. Readers who want a forward-moving plot will be frustrated. The form is the point.

Heti has been working in this autofiction territory across How Should a Person Be and her later books. Motherhood is the most focused of them on a single question, and it doesn’t pretend to arrive at a clean answer.

For readers who like Rachel Cusk’s Outline trilogy, or who care about the literary tradition of women writing about ambivalence around motherhood, this is essential. For others, it may feel like a long sit.