A thirty-five-year-old writer decides she wants to have children. Rounds of IVF treatments and several years later, she has two daughters and sits down to write this book.
World’s Best Mother is a sublime journey through pregnancy, the mothering of small children, marriage, an affair which unfolds in a heady mix of anecdote, imagination, and social commentary.
Clever and insightful, the narrator examines the myth, but also the scam, of motherhood, openly dialoguing with voices of the past that in one way or another have fueled her condition as a woman: from the legendary hominid Lucy 'the mother of humanity' to Cinderella, passing through Plato, Mother Teresa, Darwin, Maupassant, and Simone de Beauvoir along the way. Humour, love, and horror converge in this lively auto-fictional battle between the intensity of child rearing and the writer trying to fight her way out.
Industry Reviews
"A slyly funny and strikingly astute meditation on love in all its guises by a self-proclaimed 'amateur mother."
Jenny Offill bestselling author of Weather and Dept. of Speculation
"In World's Best Mother, Nuria Labari has summoned all of the vitality and tenderness of women who have come before and those who will come after. Rage and desire and love and insolence she's laid it at our feet with a wry smile, unapologetic. It is fearless, profound and destabilizing, in the way the best literature is."
Meaghan O'Connell author of And Now We Have Everything
"An honest, deep, and visceral reflection on being a mother."
Pilar Quintana author of National Book Award finalist The Bitch
"Labari's searing, insightful voice lights up the landscape of reproductive biology, culture, and history, giving us new ways to think about creativity itself. A brilliant, vital, necessary contribution to the canon."
Elisa Albert author of After Birth
"Sure, Nuria Labari's book is about being a mother, but as is indicated in the subtitle, it's about so much more. About womanhood, creativity, the joys and travails of married life, the way love changes over time. Basically, about the difficulties of being in today's world. It would be a mistake to think that this is a book just for moms though. It's a book for anyone interested in what it means to be human. Labari's voice thanks to Katie Whittemore's sharp, lively translation is absolutely riveting for its earnestness. Being a creative, perceptive mother is messy business, but Labari never shies away from that messiness, transforming this memoir into a work of art."
Chad Post Open Letter Books
"Labari writes with candor."
Kirkus Reviews
"A sincere, revealing and visceral chronicle of motherhood."
El Pais
"Prepare to read a book like you've never read before, one that breaks the bounds of the narrative and the biographical, the conventions of both traditional and alternative values. A book of humor, love, and pain; as intoxicating as strong wine and as tumultuous as life. The truth is that I can't imagine the possibility of someone not liking it."
Rosa Montero
"A story told from the edge of a knife, a fictionalized chronicle that investigates pain and darkness, but also love, solidarity, and hope."
TodoLiteratura
"In clean, quick, and pointed prose that gets into the reader's soul from the start, Labari's novel leaves space for reflections on pain and makes room for understanding and coming to the aid of the fragile, incidental individual in today's society."
El Confidencial
"Nuria sheds a light on this chaos of darkness that I inhabit when I think about my motherhood (or non-motherhood)."
Paula Bonet
