Review by Selma Carvalho

Issue no 16

In the thematically unified collection, The Almost Mothers (Dahlia Press, 2019), Laura Besley sets a tone of intimacy and immediacy. In ‘The Motherhood Contract’ she writes, ‘You must not tell the mother-to-be that she may not instantly love her child.’ At the heart of being a mother is this paradox: we fall in love with that moulting mass of moth-breath we give birth too, but nothing prepares us for the reality of motherhood—the days without end, the days consumed with isolation, fatigue, and rage.