by Meg Mason
First published 2013
Meg Mason has it all figured out at twenty-four. She's married to a man who looks like young Matt Damon and landed her dream job writing for The Times in London. Then a holiday birth control shortage changes everything. Eight months later, she's heavily pregnant and crying on a roadside, trading her career for something she knows nothing about. Mason invents motherhood by having a baby on Sunday, only to discover Monday that countless women beat her to it. Yet none can tell her the crucial details. A neighbor suggests making newborns thirsty with Doritos before bottle feeding. No one explains how to survive two years without sleep, why making park friends is harder than meeting deadlines, or how to free your hand after Super Gluing it to a stroller handle. Mason stumbles from parenting novice to mother through disasters both large and small. She discovers that motherhood, however catastrophic her approach, might be the one thing where she's truly irreplaceable.
Genres: family-life, contemporary, adult-fiction, 21st-century
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: fish-out-of-water, found-family
Setting: London
Period: 21st-century
320 pages · Paperback · HarperCollins Canada