A Better Woman

Read an Excerpt

Chapter 1: Getting Ready to Fall
I was living in Paris then, and my sixtyish, childless painter friend Simone confirmed that this longing first struck the body. 'My own body did not need it,' she said in English, without sentiment or regret. 'You must find out if yours does.'

Chapter 1: Getting Ready to Fall, Part 2
Meanwhile, my body had its own plans. All the while I was trying to compose a mature intellectual and rational framework in which to answer the question of whether or not to have a child, my body believed it already had the solution.

Acclaimed novelist Susan Johnson found, at age thirty-five, that her desire to have a baby became overwhelming. She had no inkling what motherhood would cost — or give — her. But as she went on to experience pregnancy and birth, and their impact on her marriage, health, and heart, she recorded it all. In this hauntingly lovely account, Johnson portrays a woman transformed by motherhood, and a writer forever changed by a widening chasm of experience. Her initial ecstasy jostles against bewilderment, rage, and despair, however, when she develops a rare complication of childbirth; she is "a one-woman catastrophe, a small ruined country." She is also burning to get words on paper. The result, A Better Woman, should be required reading for every woman hungry to give birth — and every mother yearning to have her deepest feelings heard.

Susan Johnson, an internationally acclaimed author, has written four novels, including Hungry Ghosts. She lives in London with her husband and two sons..

	Home \| Forum \| Search
Health Parenting Personal Growth Relationships Religion & Spirituality Career & Money