Imprint
- W&N
- W&N
- W&N
Memoirs, Birth control, contraception, family planning, Infertility & fertilization, Coping with illness & specific conditions, Swimming & diving
An artful, emotionally incisive and beautifully written debut memoir about the unique place of almost-motherhood
'What would it mean to name this place I'm in, to map it? To say: this is the landscape. It looks like this, smells like this, at night these are the sounds that carry on the wind. Almost-motherhood . . .'
When Miranda Ward and her husband decided to have a baby, they were young and optimistic. But five years, three miscarriages and one ectopic pregnancy later, she is still dealing with the ongoing aftermath of that decision, and the shadow it's cast over her relationship to her partner, her body and her future. In this searing, lyrical and radically honest memoir, Ward charts her journey through the uncertain landscape of almost-motherhood, asking questions of geography on the most intimate scale. How can we learn to be at home in our own bodies, even when we feel adrift from them? What language do we have for the spaces in between, the periods of wanting and waiting? And how do we maintain hope as we navigate towards an unknown future?
Praise for Adrift: Fieldnotes from Almost-Motherhood
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Miranda's thoughtful, sharp, insightful, funny, brave, honest and often painful writing on fertility has given form and life and language to something fundamental and universal. I wish I'd had it years ago. I'm so glad to have it now
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It's long past time we started to acknowledge the difficult space between pregnant and not and all the emotions that live there . . . a thoughtful, beautifully-written, devastating exploration of the will to reproduce and the wildness of the body
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Miranda Ward captures the visceral hopelessness of infertility, and an ambiguous but mostly-unspoken space that many women unwillingly occupy forever. She never flinches away from the pain, and because of this her tender book will be precious to many readers.
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ADRIFT is a crucial, precious book by a writer with a wide-ranging intellect, beautiful prose and an astute and refreshingly honest voice. I was hooked by it, and fascinated by the layers she weaves as she moves the topics of fertility and pregnancy loss into the light
Miranda Ward
MIRANDA WARD is a writer, lecturer and freelance editor. She has a PhD in cultural geography from Royal Holloway, University of London, where her research centred on the geographies of lap swimming and the indoor swimming pool. She grew up on a cattle ranch in California and now lives in Oxford.
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