Book 2: Making Babies by Anne Enright

This book doesn't count towards the 100 fiction books challenge that I'm participating in, but definitely counts towards my 100 books in 2013 challenge so I'm going to label it as book 2.

Anne Enright is, apparently, one of Ireland's eminent authors; however I had never heard of her before. I was browsing around in the library and saw this book, picked it up and read it. In it, Ms. Enright has just had two babies in pretty quick secession: a boy and a girl. She had them approximately 18 years after marrying their father, during which she had a mature and lucrative career as a writer. She won the Booker prize in 2007 for crying out loud. This book is made of several anecdotes about her experiences in the early years of having children and is definitely memoir.

I learned something while reading this book: It's often really hard to write about babies because, guess what, they're boring. And when you write a book on them, as Ms. Enright did - while they are infants and sleeping - it gets worse. It becomes disjointed, uncomfortable and downright hallucinogenic in places and, quite frankly, I struggled to get through it. Those feelings were not feelings that I particularly wanted to remember from the first few months after my children were born. I didn't want to remember how I would go to the bathroom and lock the door so that I could get like 5 minutes to myself or how I would just stand in the shower with the hot water running over me because I was too tired to move my hands and arms to wash my hair. The book itself was difficult to read because it didn't flow in a way that made me comfortable. I didn't feel that it came together in a way that was cohesive - too much rambling for me.

Pass on this one

Books read in 2013: 2

Books read for 100 book fiction challenge: 1