kittykornerlibrarian's review against another edition
4.0
If profanity bothers you, steer clear... but if you like good writing, interesting characters, and an in-your-face honest narrator, this book is terrific. This is all about women subverting their own identities and creating new selves during the process of birth and new motherhood. The author captures the loneliness and the loss of self that come with caring for a "bottomless pit of need" (which is exactly how I described my own daughter, years ago). It also treats the theme of women's relationships with their own bodies, especially in relationship to new motherhood. Did I mention it's also hilariously funny? It's impossible to be this funny without also being a little cruel about other people's weaknesses, but it's fiction and not real life, so who cares? The writing is terrific. This one is unforgettable.
lexiww's review against another edition
4.0
“What scares me late at night is that Walker’s a person; he hears what I say and looks up at me and wants to love me but doesn’t yet have any clue how fucked up I am. Here he is, we brought him here, he’s one of us now, the living. It’s pretty simple: an infant is to be held and bundled up and carried around. Fed, tended, protected. Helpless creature. You learn to humble yourself to him, pie-faced god. And you want to feel the enormity of that? Want it to hit you square? Imagine him hurt. Imagine him suffering. Imagine him taken. Imagine him dead. Imagine your arms empty. Imagine it, imagine it, imagine it.
These tiny people, they’re not about you. They are not for you. They do not belong to you. They are under your care, is all, and it’s your job to work at being a decent human being, love them well and a lot, don’t put your problems on them, don’t make your problems their problems, don’t use them to occupy empty parts of yourself.”
Excerpt From: Albert, Elisa. “After Birth.” Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (www.hmhco.com). iBooks.
This material may be protected by copyright.
Check out this book on the iBooks Store: https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewBook?id=885171135
These tiny people, they’re not about you. They are not for you. They do not belong to you. They are under your care, is all, and it’s your job to work at being a decent human being, love them well and a lot, don’t put your problems on them, don’t make your problems their problems, don’t use them to occupy empty parts of yourself.”
Excerpt From: Albert, Elisa. “After Birth.” Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (www.hmhco.com). iBooks.
This material may be protected by copyright.
Check out this book on the iBooks Store: https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewBook?id=885171135
greenrain's review against another edition
2.0
I wanted to like this book. I wanted to like it so much, that it makes it so much worse that it ended up being kinda awful. It started out promising, with wonderfully accurate descriptions of motherhood (simultaneously loving your child beyond all belief and being more frustrated than you ever imagined, what it feels like to be ripped apart physically and emotionally, etc). But then it took such a nasty turn that I could barely finish it. Another review on here by Morgan Schulman summed it up so perfectly, that I have to repost some of it:
"This woman is so anti-feminist it's not even funny. She hates on every single woman she encounters. She's that militant AP mom who hates on mothers who formula feed and accept their c-sections, she's classist as hell and portrays herself as the victim of a poor woman calling out her privilege, she hates on women who have mainstream tastes and want traditional weddings, and, of course, has no friends. Until she meets the gal who compares a medically necessary c section to rape. And of course, she stole her older husband from a woman his age. I kept waiting for her to be shown to be an unreliable narrator but nope." https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1161703332
The only reason I'm not giving this one star is because I think it's a topic that doesn't get enough attention. The author deserves credit for that.
"This woman is so anti-feminist it's not even funny. She hates on every single woman she encounters. She's that militant AP mom who hates on mothers who formula feed and accept their c-sections, she's classist as hell and portrays herself as the victim of a poor woman calling out her privilege, she hates on women who have mainstream tastes and want traditional weddings, and, of course, has no friends. Until she meets the gal who compares a medically necessary c section to rape. And of course, she stole her older husband from a woman his age. I kept waiting for her to be shown to be an unreliable narrator but nope." https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1161703332
The only reason I'm not giving this one star is because I think it's a topic that doesn't get enough attention. The author deserves credit for that.
sonia_reppe's review against another edition
5.0
4 and 1/2 stars. Liked this because even though it's about a new mother, who is maladjusted to momhood, it's really about the anger of losing your old body which will never be the same, (that's a quote in the book--I think, I'll check later). I loved the anger, thank you. Thank you for the realistic righteous anger. Having a post-pregnancy body sucks, and you just want to use the F word all the time, like the protagonist here does. I hardly said that word until I had a baby and then it just became part of my daily vocabulary. (My brain is still trying to recover all the advanced vocabulary I used to know before birth. (13 yrs ago). This has to do with the book because protagonist Ari finds she can't concentrate on her doctorate dissertation at all. Because post-partum your brain shrivels).
This book is called After Birth. The thing is, Ari, the Jewess protagonist, living in contemporary upstate New York, married to a professor or something--he's not important--thinks she would be not so angry, a little less angry if she had had a natural birth. She was coerced into having a C-section and she has problems with her incision, and she reads that women who had a C-section have a higher chance of post-partum blues but that's false. You know what? It sucks just as bad--maybe more so because the birth canal has gone through such trauma. And tummies that weren't cut open can get just as fucked up from stretched skin that doesn't go away even after all the weight is lost.
She knows my pain, regardless. Regardless that she was cut open, gutted, as she put it. She knows the boredom, the hormones, the getting mad at the husband when he pays more attention to the baby than her.
There are other things going on: Ari's mother had died when she was young, and wasn't even a good mother; Ari had a cold, unloving mother, and now has imaginary conversations with her wherein her mom is belittling her. I don't want to say I wish the author hadn't made this choice, I know that would not be fair, but I fear this says that some root of Ari's post-partum is due to having a cold, unloving mother. Women who have wonderful, loving moms can still get post-partum depression. I just want to say that.
And lastly, the friends thing. That changes when you have a kid, and the author deals with that well.
This book is called After Birth. The thing is, Ari, the Jewess protagonist, living in contemporary upstate New York, married to a professor or something--he's not important--thinks she would be not so angry, a little less angry if she had had a natural birth. She was coerced into having a C-section and she has problems with her incision, and she reads that women who had a C-section have a higher chance of post-partum blues but that's false. You know what? It sucks just as bad--maybe more so because the birth canal has gone through such trauma. And tummies that weren't cut open can get just as fucked up from stretched skin that doesn't go away even after all the weight is lost.
She knows my pain, regardless. Regardless that she was cut open, gutted, as she put it. She knows the boredom, the hormones, the getting mad at the husband when he pays more attention to the baby than her.
There are other things going on: Ari's mother had died when she was young, and wasn't even a good mother; Ari had a cold, unloving mother, and now has imaginary conversations with her wherein her mom is belittling her. I don't want to say I wish the author hadn't made this choice, I know that would not be fair, but I fear this says that some root of Ari's post-partum is due to having a cold, unloving mother. Women who have wonderful, loving moms can still get post-partum depression. I just want to say that.
And lastly, the friends thing. That changes when you have a kid, and the author deals with that well.
swirls's review against another edition
5.0
Unpleasant, ugly, raw, and powerful. Couldn't put it down.
lizardgoats's review against another edition
5.0
No Audiobook choice on Goodreads. Listening to it on Scribd.
A very visceral, very terrifyingly honest meditation on motherhood and the aftereffects of having a child. There's really so much more than that going on, though: what it means to have female friendships, mother-daughter relationships, romantic relationships, marriage, and creating your own family in both traditional and non-traditional senses.
A very visceral, very terrifyingly honest meditation on motherhood and the aftereffects of having a child. There's really so much more than that going on, though: what it means to have female friendships, mother-daughter relationships, romantic relationships, marriage, and creating your own family in both traditional and non-traditional senses.
ylshelflove's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.0
bt329's review against another edition
4.0
Okay, so, I started out loving this and then about halfway through found myself hating it, but for a reason which is to the author's credit: it's a very realistic depiction of pretty much every spoiled, bored, depressed, wealthy Long Island girl who I didn't get along with in high school or college (or after college! or now!) The narrator actually reminds me very vividly of one or two navel gazing girls in particular. So I wound up hating the narrator and rolling my eyes quite a lot, but I guess that speaks to the realistic quality of the writing? I also probably shouldn't be reading novels that describe c-sections in graphic detail, given that I am planning to marry a man who was 10+ pounds at birth and has a large head and oh God, childbirth is terrifying and I'm only a few years away from it. HELP.
Anywho. If you did not go to school with snotty girls from Long Island who read Ariel and decided they were the next Sylvia Plath, you might like this book. I did not like this book.
ETA: Okay so a few years after reading this book, I've come back to reassess because I still think about it ALL THE TIME. Books deserve credit if they stick in my brain- I have the worst memory in the world, so if I remember a book in detail, it did something special to me and I look upon it with respect. Just because I didn't have a good ans pleasant time reading it, that doesn't make it a bad book. Bumping up my rating up from 2 to 4 stars.
Anywho. If you did not go to school with snotty girls from Long Island who read Ariel and decided they were the next Sylvia Plath, you might like this book. I did not like this book.
ETA: Okay so a few years after reading this book, I've come back to reassess because I still think about it ALL THE TIME. Books deserve credit if they stick in my brain- I have the worst memory in the world, so if I remember a book in detail, it did something special to me and I look upon it with respect. Just because I didn't have a good ans pleasant time reading it, that doesn't make it a bad book. Bumping up my rating up from 2 to 4 stars.
mxinky's review against another edition
5.0
An excellent novel centered on a new mother experiencing post-partum depression. Another reviewer took issue with the “bitterness” of the main character, which I find odd. Post-partum depression is not a lens the narrator can shake off, it is a mental illness.
(CW: Discussions of c-sections. Also, the narsor feels that breastfeeding is best, which I know can trigger some people.)
(CW: Discussions of c-sections. Also, the narsor feels that breastfeeding is best, which I know can trigger some people.)