Female Language | Karen Kao
Motherhood by Sheila Heti The bookshop is small but well-stocked. It occupies a narrow windowless space like most places in this part of Amsterdam. At the far end of the shop sits Sheila Heti, waiting to talk about her latest novel, Motherhood . We join the crowd. We are four women in a sea of female faces. Three of us are mothers; one is not. I am one of the few women in the room past the child-bearing age. Whether a woman is still sexually productive seems relevant when Motherhood is about an unnamed protagonist wrestling with the decision to have a child. Heti and her protagonist share many of the same characteristics. Both are writers, around 40 years old, living in Toronto. Both have mothers who put their work ahead of child-rearing. Many reviewers have assumed that Motherhood is a very public accounting of Heti’s private decision. But that wasn’t Heti’s goal. Her interest is in language and how we choose to speak about the choices we make....