Great content, tedious presentation

books:


	• A Life's Work: On Becoming a Mother Rachel Cusk Picador, 2003 - 228 pages average customer review:based on 29 reviews view larger image
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Properly Genius

My good friend is pregnant with her first child and I wouldn't, couldn't, send her this book. However, I'm planning to send copies to all my girlfriends who already have kids. I didn't have the same experience as Cusk in terms of my attitude towards having a baby and the subsequent having of a baby but no matter, this book is pure genius. It's properly funny. It's a definitive work for mothers. I will read this book many times over.

great read

I found this book very interesting to read, especially since I've never had a baby and was curious about what motherhood is really like. I enjoyed the honesty of the author which gave me a great insight into the challenges that you face as a new mom. None of my friends with kids have ever talked this candidly about their motherhood experience. They always just say "It's great!"
I highly recommend this book to anyone who has ever thought about having a baby. This book will lay out the Pros and Cons for you!

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Excellent, thought-provoking book

This was one of those books that was meaningful in large part because of its timing. I read this book when my daughter was one year old, and it just really rang a lot of bells for me. I was really trying to make sense of all I was going through - in terms of the process of motherhood, staying home with babies, leaving career, and abandoning my peer groups. It was really kind of dark humor and a little depressing -- but appropriately so -- given the difficulty of the transition. The first chapter was devoted to the process of preparing for birth, and her cynical observations combined with her own fear hit home in a big way.
Cusk's analysis of the roller-coaster emotions associated with pregnancy, childbirth, and new parenthood will resonate as truth among many new, and even seasoned, mothers. Highly recommended to all those who are seeking a thoughtful analysis of the process of becoming a mother.

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Great content, tedious presentation

I was looking for another new mom to commiserate with--and I found it in Rachel Cusk! BUT... my brain is fried--I have a new baby! How the heck am I supposed to concentrate to read this book?! It is obviously written for students of literature. I caught some glimpses of her in there, but mostly she was writing to hear herself talk. Which is ok for a work of literature, but I was just looking for a fun non-fiction read.

A voice not heard

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.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

The experience of motherhood is an experience in contradiction. It is commonplace and it is impossible to imagine. It is prosaic and it is mysterious. It is at once banal, bizarre, compelling, tedious, comic, and catastrophic. To become a mother is to become the chief actor in a drama of human existence to which no one turns up. It is the process by which an ordinary life is transformed unseen into a story of strange and powerful passions, of love and servitude, of confinement and compassion.

In a book that is touching, hilarious, provocative, and profoundly insightful, novelist Rachel Cusk attempts to tell something of an old story set in a new era of sexual equality. Cusk?s account of a year of modern motherhood becomes many stories: a farewell to freedom, sleep, and time; a lesson in humility and hard work; a journey to the roots of love; a meditation on madness and mortality; and most of all a sentimental education in babies, books, toddler groups, bad advice, crying, breastfeeding, and never being alone.

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