Description
The best kind of book: the one you didn't know you were craving until it appeared . . . self-interrogative, intricately perceptive. I absolutely inhaled it' JIA TOLENTINOA very richly interesting exploration of a complex subject. Begoña Gómez Urzaiz tells the stories with such intelligence and wit and generosity' TESSA HADLEYWhen it comes to children: a man leaves, a woman abandons Ingrid Bergman, Muriel Spark, Maria Montessori, Joni Mitchell what do these vastly different women have in common?During the pandemic, trapped at home with young children and struggling to find creative space to write, journalist Begoña Gómez Urzaiz became fixated on artistic women who were able to overcome both society's judgement and their own maternal instincts in order to leave their children. More than anything, she was fascinated by her own prejudice towards these women, so clearly tied up in a much wider cultural bias.Using famous examples including Doris Lessing, fictional ones such as Anna Karenina
