Wow…. What a beautifully written book
This book had be emotionally attached to the twins and just wanting everything to be ok.
This book is raw but amazing.

I thought I would find it hard to relate to the book as someone who has never wanted kids but Segal writes with such emotion and poise that it's hard not to be sucked in and feel raw by the time you close the book. A quiet, steady meditation on motherhood, community, grief, kindness and meaning, This was also a memoir that read like a thriller, each page and each scene written with excruciating tension and urgency, so that the reader feels what the mother - who could not know if her children would survive or not - felt.

I am grateful to #netgalley for this copy, which I was given in exchange for an honest review.

Mother Ship by Francesca Segal (2019)

In an early October day British author Francesca Segal, 30 weeks pregnant, started bleeding. As denial kicked in, Segal convinced herself it was going to be ok, not realising she was about to give birth, far too early, to identical twin girls. Twin A and twin B.

This moving memoir on prematurity & the complicated journey parents go through in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) spoke to me on many levels. There have been premature babies in my family & friendship circle. I’m also aware- through my work- of the long term complications prematurity may lead to- especially extreme prematurity. This is a tough beginning to parenthood that hasn’t been given enough attention.

This is a welcome addition to the parenthood literature, exploring a corner of the experience left in the dark. Segal describes the alienating distance between mother & babies when they’re placed in incubators, with tubes & machines all around:
“They are the furthest from me, and the furthest from one another that they have ever been. I do not recognise them. They are otherworldly in their strangeness, and oceanic in their beauty. They are half-beings in the half-light and in an instant my heart shatters, and I become half a mother, twice”.
How to become a parent with such a rocky start?

Mother Ship (which just came out in paperback) tracks Segal’s journey in the hospital those first weeks. It’s also a story of solidarity & community. The friendships with parents & staff in the NICU are beautifully brought to life. No one can do this alone.

Segal dedicates this book to the NHS for ‘the compassion, generosity & fundamental values’ she found there. It’s no mean feat to manage ‘compassion & generosity’ with the ongoing attacks to the welfare state in the UK, but in the NHS these qualities remain. This is worth remembering when the emphasis nowadays is on the NHS’s shortcomings & flaws.

This book must have been so difficult to write. It is such a beautiful piece of writing yet it’s so raw- I found myself emotionally attached to the twins willing them to get well.
It is truly a special book as Francesca and her family are inviting us into this heartfelt journey.
Highly recommended
Thank you to both NetGalley and Random House Uk for my eARC in exchange for my honest unbiased review