A Life's Work - The Library of the Uncommons

Paperback, 228 pages

English language

Published March 1, 2003 by Picador.

ISBN:: 978-0-312-31130-8
OCLC Number:: 52468528

(1 review)

Multi-award-winning author Rachel Cusk’s honest memoir that captures the life-changing wonders of motherhood.

Selected by The New York Times as one of the 50 Best Memoirs of the Past 50 Years

“Funny and smart and refreshingly akin to a war diary―sort of Apocalypse Baby Now . . . A Life’s Work is wholly original and unabashedly true.” ― The New York Times Book Review

A Life’s On Becoming a Mother is Rachel Cusk’s funny, moving, brutally honest account of her early experiences of motherhood. When it was published it 2001, it divided critics and readers. One famous columnist wrote a piece demanding that Cusk’s children be taken into care, saying she was unfit to look after them, and Oprah Winfrey invited her on the show to defend herself.

An education in babies, books, breast-feeding, toddler groups, broken nights, bad advice and never being alone, it is a landmark work, which …

Multi-award-winning author Rachel Cusk’s honest memoir that captures the life-changing wonders of motherhood.

Selected by The New York Times as one of the 50 Best Memoirs of the Past 50 Years

“Funny and smart and refreshingly akin to a war diary―sort of Apocalypse Baby Now . . . A Life’s Work is wholly original and unabashedly true.” ― The New York Times Book Review

A Life’s On Becoming a Mother is Rachel Cusk’s funny, moving, brutally honest account of her early experiences of motherhood. When it was published it 2001, it divided critics and readers. One famous columnist wrote a piece demanding that Cusk’s children be taken into care, saying she was unfit to look after them, and Oprah Winfrey invited her on the show to defend herself.

An education in babies, books, breast-feeding, toddler groups, broken nights, bad advice and never being alone, it is a landmark work, which has provoked acclaim and outrage in equal measure.

6 editions

ctaymor reviewed A Life's Work by Rachel Cusk

Review of "A Life's Work" on 'Goodreads'

2 stars

I suspect that this book is excellent, and just not for me at the moment I read it. I was pregnant, deeply depressed, and searching for someone I could relate to and who gave me hope. This book is not that.
It's a deeply painful emotional memoir about the hardest, worst moments of new motherhood. As the author tells her friend (who is also a new mom), at this point in her experience, for her, there was nothing at all good about being a mom.

This is not a story about hope, or finding meaning in the drudgery and challenge of early parenthood. It just sits in the authors pain. I'm glad it was written, and I'm sure it's useful for someone, but not for me right now.

Subjects

Parenting - General
Family & Relationships
Family / Parenting / Childbirth
Child Care/Parenting
Family & Relationships / Parenting
Motherhood
Parenting