La mejor madre del mundo
Humor, love, and horror converge in this lively auto-fictional battle between the intensity of child rearing and the writer trying to fight her way out.
A thirty-five-year-old writer decides she wants to have children. Rounds of IVF treatments and several years later, she has two daughters and sits down to write this book. World’s Best Mother is a sublime journey—through pregnancy, the mothering of small children, marriage, an affair—which unfolds in a heady mix of anecdote, imagination, and social commentary. Clever and insightful, the narrator examines the myth, but also the scam, of motherhood, openly dialoguing with voices of the past that in one way or another have fueled her condition as a woman: from the legendary hominid Lucy—“the mother of humanity”—to Cinderella, passing through Plato, Mother Teresa, Darwin, Maupassant, and Simone de Beauvoir along the way.
PRESS
«A slyly funny and strikingly astute meditation on love in all its guises by a self-proclaimed ‘amateur mother.’» Jenny Offill, bestselling author of Weather
«In World’s Best Mother, Nuria Labari has summoned all of the vitality and tenderness of women who have come before and those who will come after. Rage and desire and love and insolence―she’s laid it at our feet with a wry smile, unapologetic. It is fearless, profound and destabilizing, in the way the best literature is.» Meaghan O’Connell, author of And Now We Have Everything
«An honest, deep, and visceral reflection on being a mother.» Pilar Quintana, author of National Book Award finalist The Bitch
«Labari’s searing, insightful voice lights up the landscape of reproductive biology, culture, and history, giving us new ways to think about creativity itself. A brilliant, vital, necessary contribution to the canon.» Elisa Albert, author of After Birth
«Sure, Nuria Labari’s book is about being a mother, but as is indicated in the subtitle, it’s about so much more. About womanhood, creativity, the joys and travails of married life, the way love changes over time. Basically, about the difficulties of being in today’s world. It would be a mistake to think that this is a book just for moms though. It’s a book for anyone interested in what it means to be human. Labari’s voice―thanks to Katie Whittemore’s sharp, lively translation―is absolutely riveting for its earnestness. Being a creative, perceptive mother is messy business, but Labari never shies away from that messiness, transforming this memoir into a work of art.» Chad Post, Open Letter Books
TRANSLATIONS
English: World Editions
