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dizzzybrook's review against another edition
emotional
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.75
What Ravn has done here is quite impressive. Utilizing a variety of writing styles and techniques that force readers to confront the uncomfortable truths about childbirth and motherhood, the narrator brings to light some daunting questions about identity. While there are many undeniably striking prose and sentiments throughout, I can’t help but think that the structure of “My Work” ultimately distracts from the story being told. About halfway through, I had a feeling that I knew where the book was heading and unfortunately I was correct. If you have read works like Nettel’s “Still Born”, or Kawakami’s “Breasts and Eggs”, you might know what I’m getting at here.. I do not think this is a must read by any means but I did enjoy my time spent with it. This is not a book that will work for everyone but as far as experimental writing goes, I would say Ravn succeeded in crafting a piece of writing worth exploring.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Panic attacks/disorders, Suicidal thoughts, Medical content, Medical trauma, and Pregnancy
Moderate: Self harm and Blood
Minor: Eating disorder
errie's review
3.5
Content Warnings
Graphic: Mental illness, Panic attacks/disorders, Suicidal thoughts, Medical content, Medical trauma, and Pregnancy
zoebaillie's review against another edition
challenging
dark
funny
hopeful
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.5
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child death, Mental illness, Panic attacks/disorders, Self harm, Medical content, Medical trauma, and Pregnancy
Moderate: Miscarriage and Vomit
Minor: Violence and Murder
moa's review
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.5
Content Warnings
Graphic: Mental illness, Suicidal thoughts, Blood, Medical trauma, and Pregnancy
abbie_'s review against another edition
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
5.0
Thanks to the publisher & Netgalley for my free digital ARC in exchange for a review!
This was my last pick for Women in Translation month and it was absolutely brilliant, one of my favourites of 2023 and one of the best books about motherhood I’ve ever read! It’s been translated from the Danish by Jennifer Russell and Sophia Hersi Smith and they’ve done a stellar job, especially given the medical snippets and poetry throughout.
This was my last pick for Women in Translation month and it was absolutely brilliant, one of my favourites of 2023 and one of the best books about motherhood I’ve ever read! It’s been translated from the Danish by Jennifer Russell and Sophia Hersi Smith and they’ve done a stellar job, especially given the medical snippets and poetry throughout.
I’m not a mother and have no intentions of being one, but anyone who wants to come close to understanding what it is to be a mother should read My Work. Ravn exposes the incongruity of the stories we tell about motherhood and what it’s actually like to undergo such a radical process and come out the other side responsible for a human being. The protagonist Anna is struggling with postpartum depression, and the structure of the book is incredible in the way it reflects her scattered mental state.
Anna often is at odds with her partner Aksel, as she doesn’t believe he fully ‘gets’ what it is to be a mother. And it’s definitely true that most men are not shouldering the same amount of mental, emotional and physical labour a mother does when it comes to parenting. When preparing for a child it’s not men who are pummelled by the constant barrage of warnings and risks that could harm the future baby, things you’d never think of like hair dye and chemicals within mattress stuffing. A lot of Anna’s obsessive thoughts revolve around time and how it seems to slip away from her, something I related to hard as I’m constantly aware of and counting time. Ravn’s depiction of anxiety and depression is breathtaking.
I’ve read quite a lot of books about motherhood that don’t shy away from the nitty-gritty, but My Work takes the cake. I’ve never read a book which lists out times and details of Braxton Hicks, which talks about colostrum and all the other details regularly glossed over in media.
Anna is a writer, and Ravn draws on a lot of other women writers who have experiences of childbirth, pregnancy and motherhood to discuss what it means to be a mother and produce art.
Some of my favourite quotes (taken from an e-ARC):
‘Why am I trapped in the belief that writing about motherhood is shameful when I know that creating life where once there was none, creating flesh where once there was no flesh, is one of the most radical and outrageous things a person can do?’
‘Is telling a mother-to-be the story that upon the birth of her child she will feel indescribable happiness a way of giving shape to the shapeless? To put the formless event of birth into a form? And to call that happiness?’
‘The notion that one must sacrifice everything for the sake of art - that only in this way can it become sublime - implies that anyone who is forced to take care of others, to perform manual labour, cannot become an artist.
If you have family members who are sick, children to raise, expenses to pay through work that's unrelated to art, you cannot be an artist.’
‘And each child comes into the world as themselves, through their own channel. And I became, I was, sheer channel, nothing but a channel of flesh for the child. And all my walls screamed with pain when he was born. And what was I then, after his arrival, but a used channel? A husk, a slough, discarded by a baby. The eyes moved away from me, they turned to the child. They took him into their arms. I'm still lying on the delivery table. I can't get out. Many years have gone by since then, but no one has noticed that the night they welcomed the child, I died, and what now walks around among them is not a human but the discarded channel for the child's arrival.’
‘I need to stop thinking that my husband can see all these things that need doing and instead understand that I alone read the apartment as a to-do list that needs completing to sustain the child’s standard of living.’
‘To give birth to a child is also to give birth to a future corpse, you make a death, have you ever thought about that?’ ‘Um, no’
Content Warnings
Graphic: Mental illness, Panic attacks/disorders, Medical content, Medical trauma, and Pregnancy