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22nd out of 39 books
—
6 voters
Making Babies: Stumbling into Motherhood
by
Anne Enright
Anne Enright, one of Ireland's most remarkable writers, has just had two babies: a girl and a boy. Making Babies, is the intimate, engaging, and very funny record of the journey from early pregnancy to age two. Written in dispatches, typed with a sleeping baby in the room, it has the rush of good news - full of the mess, the glory, and the raw shock of it all. An antidote...more
Paperback, 196 pages
Published
2005
by Vintage
(first published 2004)
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After eighteen years of childless marriage, novelist Anne Enright was shocked to find herself pregnant. Being the sharp observer of human behaviour and honest writer that she is, she decided to keep track of her own thoughts and reactions on her pregnancy and the birth of her first (and very quickly, second) child. The result is a very clear eyed, rational, and terribly funny memoir of a woman who is surprised by life, fiercely in love with her kids, but very honest all the while
I absolutely lov...more
I absolutely lov...more
Anne Enright’s Making Babies: Stumbling into Motherhood looks at the personal experience of becoming a mother. Gender is first evident on page 39 of the book wear Enright claims that when a woman cleans it is considered normal, but when a man cleans they are obsessive. Thus, connecting to stereotypes about women, stating that they should be involved in the household duties whilst the men work. In the lecture it was discussed that gender differentiates due to the experience of the body. On Page 4...more
You know that friend who always makes you ask the journalistic Five W's? Like, where in the world did you find her? What just came out of her mouth? Who actually says that? When will she lighten up? Why do you keep hanging out with her? How will you explain her appeal to your other friends? Meet my new pal Anne Enright, an Irish author with accolades to spare and a several-tour veteran of her own grisly psychological war.
Enright recorded her first few years of "Making Babies" (i.e., motherhood)...more
Enright recorded her first few years of "Making Babies" (i.e., motherhood)...more
A delightful book for what it is. Some of the essays were published elsewhere first and they've been brought together with some additional material. The author's tone is at times serious (especially in the last chapter/essay), but mostly wry and downright funny. I love the mixture of despair and devotion that she weaves through the narrative of what it's like to have a baby.
The only thing I thought missing was an exploration into why, after eighteen years of marriage, she and her husband decided...more
The only thing I thought missing was an exploration into why, after eighteen years of marriage, she and her husband decided...more
"Children are actually a form of brainwashing. They are a cult, a perfectly legal cult. Think about it. When you join a cult you are undernourished, you are denied sleep, you are forced to do repetitive and pointless tasks at random hours of the day and night, then you stare deep into your despotic leader's eyes, repeating meaningless phrases, or mantras, like Ooh da gorgeous. Yes, you are!" I read with a kind of visceral shock, as if the truth of this is only now sinking in. Yes, it's funny. Be...more
I enjoyed this book, and definitely the subject matter, but the structure was too slapdash for me to give it a higher rating. Anne Enright writes engagingly, but the book itself never quite pulls together as a cohesive collection. Ms Enright admits towards the end that she tends to write fragmented, incoherent books, and while that might serve well for her fiction (which I've never read, unfortunately,) it does nothing for this assortment of vignettes and essays. It's frequently funny, and often...more
I read a short piece by Anne Enright in the TLS and fell in love. Literally have been carrying the piece around and re-reading it like a love letter. I have a suspicion she writes extremely well about having children. To be seen...
This was exactly the book I needed to read.
Enright is a real human being. She isn't obsessed with the best way or the right way to deal with babies. She doesn't romanticize the experience or wrap it in psuedo-spiritual womyn power.
She made some babies. And then wrote about it. All of it. From the pleasure of first words exchanged to the monotony of a colicky baby. She writes about cigarettes and drunkenness and worry and the way your sense of self melts away. The way you are faced with your own...more
Enright is a real human being. She isn't obsessed with the best way or the right way to deal with babies. She doesn't romanticize the experience or wrap it in psuedo-spiritual womyn power.
She made some babies. And then wrote about it. All of it. From the pleasure of first words exchanged to the monotony of a colicky baby. She writes about cigarettes and drunkenness and worry and the way your sense of self melts away. The way you are faced with your own...more
this got amazingly glowing reviews, like, EVERYWHERE. people were like, "enright is a poet & she turns her remarkable abilities on the mundane details of the family unit, elevating them to the sublime, but without losing her trademark irish sense of humor."
i don't know, dudes. it's another volume of personal essays about having babies. maybe i have read too many books on this topic, but there was nothing in here that really bowled me over. clearly enright is slightly more capable of employin...more
i don't know, dudes. it's another volume of personal essays about having babies. maybe i have read too many books on this topic, but there was nothing in here that really bowled me over. clearly enright is slightly more capable of employin...more
1 like · like · see review
This is not normally the kind of book I would pick up, a collection of essays about motherhood. That kind of thing usually seems to be just so much navel-gazing, to me.
But I read a good review of this, it was short, and I decided to give it a try. It WAS navel-gazing. Nevertheless, I did enjoy her very clear-eyed descriptions of all the phases of new parenthood--pregnancy, birth, infancy, toddlerhood. It brought up memories of my own that I had almost forgotten about, and it was fun to relive t...more
But I read a good review of this, it was short, and I decided to give it a try. It WAS navel-gazing. Nevertheless, I did enjoy her very clear-eyed descriptions of all the phases of new parenthood--pregnancy, birth, infancy, toddlerhood. It brought up memories of my own that I had almost forgotten about, and it was fun to relive t...more
Cute and funny. Made me remember what it was like to have a new baby. I especially loved her description of a newborn baby's eyes and how it looks at you when it is first born. Oh my gosh, how could I forget that?! It's been a loooong time.
I would have liked to know more about how the author decided to have a baby after 18 years of marriage and then fall into it so naturally. That part wasn't explored at all. But I certainly could relate to just about everything else in the book. It's funny to...more
I would have liked to know more about how the author decided to have a baby after 18 years of marriage and then fall into it so naturally. That part wasn't explored at all. But I certainly could relate to just about everything else in the book. It's funny to...more
Apr 23, 2012
Rachel McCready-Flora
rated it
5 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
Anyone that has children or is thinking of having children
Anne Enright makes me want to be a writer. Unfortunately, she is so amazing at capturing the small moments and parents' feelings and thoughts during the first year of a baby's life, I realize I would be a writing failure. She has a way of identifying things I didn't know I felt about motherhood. I would like to think we have similar souls, but I think it has more to do with a moderate amount of snark (and me wishing I was cool too).
This has been the most enjoyable parenting memoir I've read so f...more
This has been the most enjoyable parenting memoir I've read so f...more
I am sure glad I read this book after having kids. She is so frank about pregnancy and the early months of the baby, it may have scared me off. She really did take me back to when my kids were young. I had forgotten that when babies stop crying after what seems like forever, it takes awhile for your brain to realize that the crying has really stopped. Those were the days.
Enright's writing was very good, and I am planning on trying out one of her novels. I wish this book were put together better....more
Enright's writing was very good, and I am planning on trying out one of her novels. I wish this book were put together better....more
I started this book a week after one of my friends had her first baby and I couldn't help but have babies, babies, babies on the brain. As many of my friends begin trying to, or (not) succeeding in, becoming pregnant, I find that much of their experience doesn't seem reflected anywhere. (It's always in you, as a librarian, that urge to find the right book for the right person at the right time, even if usually the right thing to do is to share a cup of tea or coffee or a beer and listen instead....more
3.5 stars for this somewhat uneven collection of essays about parenting and babies. Some of the essays I didn't get quite as into. I loved "Babies: A Breeder's Guide" which caused me to laugh hysterically and included many gems, for example:
"Babies sometimes cry while they are still asleep. This gives them an unfair advantage over their parents, who cannot comfort them without waking up." (p. 134)
I also loved "Science" where she skewers researchers/ media writers who blame mothers for everything...more
"Babies sometimes cry while they are still asleep. This gives them an unfair advantage over their parents, who cannot comfort them without waking up." (p. 134)
I also loved "Science" where she skewers researchers/ media writers who blame mothers for everything...more
Dec 17, 2012
Brian
rated it
3 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Recommends it for:
expecting mother, maybe.
Recommended to Brian by:
nytimes book review
(3.0) Ask a mother if you should read this. I'm not sure.
First and last essays (on UFOs, on suicide/death) I could've done without. A few were funny, most slightly incoherent. I liked the less cynical ones (later in book) as well. Wonder what a future/new/second-time mother thinks of this as well (it's written for her, not for me).
Two sections I liked in particular:
* Babies: A Breeder's Guide: "Crying", in which the father says "she's fine", the mother points to incessant, ear-curdling screaming...more
First and last essays (on UFOs, on suicide/death) I could've done without. A few were funny, most slightly incoherent. I liked the less cynical ones (later in book) as well. Wonder what a future/new/second-time mother thinks of this as well (it's written for her, not for me).
Two sections I liked in particular:
* Babies: A Breeder's Guide: "Crying", in which the father says "she's fine", the mother points to incessant, ear-curdling screaming...more
Maybe you need to read this book on a plane, with your breast exposed for two hours so your sleeping 10 month old baby has somewhere to rest his head between fretful, half waking sips. Maybe you need your other two daughters and your husband to be sitting two seats back, playing a loud game of bingo with a stranger's child they have adopted called Gemma, so you can reflect on how charming they sound when they are not under your jurisdiction. Maybe that vulnerable breast is also your heart, is al...more
5 likes · like · see review
Oct 29, 2008
Julie
rated it
5 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
anyone
Recommended to Julie by:
found it at the library
I hadn’t read anything by the Irish novelist Anne Enright when I began her record of her journey through the birth of her two children and her first few years of motherhood but having finished it, I’m on a mission to the library to check out her other work.
Enright tells it like it is and she is witty, incredibly open and very moving. Much of the book was written in pieces while her baby daughter was sleeping in the same room. She writes about the beauty and strangeness of pregnancy, the vulnera...more
Enright tells it like it is and she is witty, incredibly open and very moving. Much of the book was written in pieces while her baby daughter was sleeping in the same room. She writes about the beauty and strangeness of pregnancy, the vulnera...more
Feb 24, 2008
courtney
rated it
4 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
parents, prospective parents, people who know parents
i first read anne enright's short story "the house of the architect's love story" in an anthology of irish writers or for a class or something, and i looked in vain for years for her collection, The Portable Virgin -- which, via amazon, i happily own. i have also read her novels The Wig My Father Wore, What Are You Like? and The Pleasure of Eliza Lynch. and i liked them all... but the wit of her short stories was somewhat elusive in her novels (except in Wig, which is quite funny). anyway -- in...more
The novelist Anne Enright was married for 18 years before she and her husband decided to have children, and this memoir of her experience manages to offer both something of a grandmother's wry wisdom and a new mother's fresh surprise. She is honest, funny and always, obviously, deeply in love with and fascinated by her two children, whether she is comparing pregnancy to alien abduction or musing on how much of every day is devoted to socks. "My only excuse," she writes in the opening section, Ap...more
This was kind of a slow-burn; definitely took a while to grow on me but I really got to appreciate Enright's wry, funny essays on motherhood. The fact that she came later to motherhood and dealt with some of the same Irish-Catholic guilt I grew up with definitely helped me emphasize. Worth checking out if you like her writing, or would like some validation that motherhood isn't all smiling cherubs and sweet kisses.
It is remarkably hard to find intelligent, well-crafted writing on motherhood. Many glorify the role, while others snark about it. Most seem to reduce it to a whirlwind of puke and vomit. Anne Enright writes bluntly about the beautiful and sublime aspects of becoming a mother as well as the humbling and crass bits. She takes on the scientists and sociologists who seem to be constantly finding new shortcomings in mothers, as well as the sadism of women who seem to take pleasure in the suffering o...more
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Making Babies may not be everyone’s cup of tea—it was written in spurts while Enright’s children napped—and has a stream of consciousness, blurry quality that could be irritating if it wasn’t so reminiscent of the way I sometimes feel about parenting. My own thoughts and feelings come and go in spastic bursts of nostalgia, love and frustration and Enright captured this so well. As parenting memoirs go, the content isn’t surprising (she talks about poop, she talks about sleep, etc.), but the grea...more
Between this book and Jessica Valenti's Why Have Kids? you will find a great balance to the 15 other typical books you read during pregnancy. If this book doesn't make you laugh out loud at least five times then I don't know what will. I love her voice and having read her Booker Prize winning The Gathering, I was hoping for similarly spectacular writing and was not disappointed.
After eighteen years of marriage and almost reaching middle age, Enright found herself becoming a mother. Before she knew it, she had two children running around. She was already a successful author in her native Ireland, but she soon realized that she was much less confident at being a mother than writing. During the first few years of her children's lives, she took time between feedings and diaper changes to write about all the messiness as well as the joys of motherhood, particularly motherho...more
I like the second half of the book more than the first, I think because I was getting used to her humor and the Irish-isms. I laughed quite a bit and was soothed by the honest admission of the emotions she had (and sometimes wish she didn't have) about motherhood. My craziness feels less crazy now. Fantastic writer, her voice is really unique.
Anne Enright is one spirited, funny writer! She captured the beauty and the exquisite agony of being pregnant and having a baby. Her writing draws you in to her stories about how funny, poignant, and painful it is to be a mother! I adored this book! Read it and see if you can find your experience in her gorgeous prose!
This is good! Who else writes about what amniotic fluid smells like? (grass or tea, according to Anne Enright) The essays are short, and contain gems such as "No one gives a toss about your second pregnancy. Get on with it." I recommend for soon to be moms and moms already. And anyone who likes babies.
The review in our paper sounded like this would be an amusing book and it is----written by an Irish mother who had her first baby at 37, it reminded me of my own first-mother days. Plenty of laughs, especially about giving birth, but also a lot of real truths. Think I'll look into her novels now.
Even though she has a good writing style (I might try one of her fiction books), this just wasn't my cup of tea. What I expected after reading the inside cover did not match at all what the book actually was, throwing me off from the start. I always finish the books I start, but this one was a struggle.
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Anne Enright is a Booker Prize-winning Irish author.
She has published essays, short stories, a non-fiction book and four novels.
Before her novel The Gathering won the 2007 Man Booker Prize, Enright had a low profile in Ireland and the United Kingdom, although her books were favourably reviewed and widely praised.
Her writing explores themes such as family relationships, love and sex, Ireland's di...more
More about Anne Enright...
She has published essays, short stories, a non-fiction book and four novels.
Before her novel The Gathering won the 2007 Man Booker Prize, Enright had a low profile in Ireland and the United Kingdom, although her books were favourably reviewed and widely praised.
Her writing explores themes such as family relationships, love and sex, Ireland's di...more
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Aug 31, 2012 09:25am