Still Born is a masterclass in pared-back writing that pulls no punches in exploring the extremes of human emotion. Nettel holds a microscope up to the decision whether or not to have children, and the complexities that result from that decision.

Alina and Laura are both in their mid-thirties and have thusfar focused on themselves, their careers and their desires. Laura has decided she doesn't want children and has her tubes tied. She strikes up a tender relationship with a neighbour's child, who is very much in need of love and attention following the death of his father.

Alina goes in the opposite direction, stopping at nothing to have a child, the consequences of which are life-altering for her and her husband Aurelio.

Alina and Laura's friendship persists throughout as we view their lives somewhat at a remove. There's a detached, plain narrative that belies a depth of emotion and a profound insight into life and the unexpected ways in which our paths are altered forever by our decision to have or not to have children.

I absolutely loved this one and didn't want to put it down. A short read at around 200 pages, translated by Rosalind Harvey, I'll definitely seek out more of Mexican author Nettel's work. 4-4.5/5

*Many thanks to @fitzcaraldoeditions for the ARC via @netgalley. Still Born will be published on 22 June 2022. As always, this is an honest review.*

Stunning narrative . Felt like having my feelings plucked off me feather by feather from start to end. And/but then embalmed in a surprising tender love at the end of it all . 'Birds' appears frequently in the novel as a symbolism/otherwise a lot so I thought that felt like an apt way to describe the book . Blood, life, death, pain, love, and all the in-betweens. Motherhood, and childhood. What is the right way? There is none. Choose life and love above all. I love Nettel's previous books, but this might be a strong favourite.

“Who has not plunged headlong into an irreconcilable love affair knowing it has no future, and clinging to a glimmer of hope as flimsy as a blade of grass. “Pourquoi durer est-il mieux que brûler ?” wondered Roland Barthes, sceptically. Love and common sense are not always compatible. In general, one tends to choose intensity no matter how little time it lasts, and in spite of all that it puts at risk.”

Still Born (2022) is Rosalind Harvey's translation of Guadalupe Nettel's La hija única (2020).

It opens with a eloquent description of the fragility of life expressed through a new born:

“Watching a baby as it sleeps is to contemplate the fragility of all life. Listening to its soft breath generates a mixture of calm and awe. I observe the baby before me: its face relaxed, squishy, milk trickling from one corner of its mouth, its perfect eyelids. And yet I know that, every day, one of the children asleep in all the cots around the world will cease to exist. It will be extinguished without a sound, like a star snuffed out in the universe, a void amongst the thousands of others that continue to light up the darkness, without its death throwing anyone into disarray. Perhaps its mother will remain inconsolable for the rest of her life; perhaps its father as well. The rest of us will accept the circumstance with astonishing resignation. The death of a newborn is something so common it surprises no one and yet, how can we accept it when we have been so moved by its beauty? I watch this baby sleep, swaddled in its green sleepsuit, its head to one side on the little white pillow, and I wish fervently for it to carry on living, for nothing to disrupt its sleep or its life, for it to be shielded from all the dangers of the world, and for it to be overlooked by the destructive path of life’s whirlwind of catastrophes. ‘Nothing will happen to you while I’m here,’ I promise, knowing, even as I say it, that I am lying, for deep down I am as helpless and as vulnerable as this baby.”

The novel is narrated by Laura. She and her closest friend Alina are in their mid-30s. both strong feminists, and each has, or had, firmly rejected motherhood, not just for themselves, but generally. But when both women enter relationships, Laura in Paris and Alina back in Mexico, they reach opposite decisions.

Laura's partner starts talking about children and she has her tubes tied, behind his back, causing their relationship to disintegrate. When, after a spiritual pilgrimage to Nepal (Laura's philosophical worldview an odd blend of Buddhism and Tarot cards), she returns to Mexico, she finds Alina is undertaking fertility treatment, desparate to conceive. One day Laura gets a call:

“'I’ve got good news,’ she told me, ‘and I wanted you to be the first to know.’ She didn’t need to explain any further. I had known her for years and it was enough to hear her tone of voice to know what she was going to tell me. When eventually she pronounced the word ‘pregnant’, my heart leapt in a feeling so close to joy that it threw me. How on earth could I be rejoicing? Alina was about to disappear and join the sect of mothers, those creatures with no life of their own who, zombie- like, with huge bags under their eyes, lugged prams around the streets of the city. In less than a year she would be transformed into a child-rearing automaton. The friend I had always counted on would vanish for good, and here I was, at the other end of the line, congratulating her? I have to admit that hearing her sound so contented was infectious. Although throughout my life I had militated against my sex carrying such a burden, I decided not to wage war against this happiness.”

This passage is from when Laura accompanies Alina to a first scan to determine the baby's development and, incidentally, its gender, the latter immediately assigning her baby a name, Ines, when she discovers she is having a girl.

“I wondered what our world would be like if we were given a combination of letters, or images like Cloud over Lake or Ember in Fire, and were left to decide what gender to choose or invent for ourselves. And finally, I asked myself what happens when a child is born with an ambiguous sex, or with two, and, years later– once the doctors, with the parents’ consent, have amputated or closed off the rejected sex forever– this child refuses to accept the gender that was arbitrarily assigned to them?”

But Alina's pregnancy takes a dramatic adverse turn, when after a later scan she is informed that her daughter's brain is not developing and the baby will likely die immediately after birth:

“'But what if she does live?' Alina insisted, perhaps trying to hold on to one last hope, the possibility of a miracle, or perhaps afraid to of this very thing. 'Will she just be a lump without emotions, without any intelligence?'

'If she were to live, then that's how she would be, yes' the doctor said.'“

But Alina decides to carry the baby to term. Meanwhile Laura becomes increasingly involved with her neighbour and her little boy, both troubled after the death, in an accident, of the neighbour's abusive husband, and takes on a sort of motherhood role of her own.

In many respects the novel is a gripping and powerful exploration of motherhood, and indeed of what it means to live.

My reservation is the prose style, where powerful passages such as those quoted comes between pages of relatively quotidian story. Perhaps that is deliberate - even dealing (I suspect no spoiler alert needed) with a severely handicapped child - has its elements of routine, but it meant a 203 page novel felt too long. The narrative perspective was also odd - a favourite bugbear of mine - with Laura's story in the first person, and Alina's narrated by her in the third, but with little difference between them (Laura forming at times the role more of an omniscient third person narrator)

So I can see why others have found this impressive but 3 stars for me.

It was a thoughtful book on the various and changing perspectives on motherhood and womanhood. I really enjoyed it and will be looking forward to reading her other books.

In Guadalupe Nettel's Still Born, motherhood is much more than the dyad of woman and child. The book comprises two intersecting parables expanding motherhood, uncoupling it from birth, nurture, and cherishing. The book's motherhood is unconventional, a conduit bridging needs and emotional dynamics, expanding conceptions of family.
Children arrive unexpected, from other places. Laura, the book's principal narrator and protagonist, has her tubes tied by page 21, only to discover that cutting bloodlines does not exempt her from maternity in an expanded field. With her friend Alina, she finds a child's growth and development are never untroubled waters: Empathies ripple outward.
Page by page, as the stories unravel, other motherhoods materialise. Twinkling stars shed uncertain light across the book's neat constellation of relationships. Nettel's mothers are all sorts of people, vulnerable as well as meritorious; they extend gentle, responsible support and protection. Instead of being some kind of vague beneficence, the maternity the book describes is exact, quantifiable, like a measured dose of poison in a vial or the interest on a debt. It spreads, lapping social responsibilities and activism.
Sometimes, children set an example, determination expressed in snot and tears. Mothers follow. Eventually, the nanny articulates the book's theme, "Ines wants us to be happy—it's the least we can do for her."
Still Born is a perfect read for anyone who wants to turn their back on conflict and patriarchy but can't imagine what that could look like.

Here we have two friends that grew up without the desire to have kids. One of them has changed her mind and decides to have a baby in her 30s; the other (who narrates the story in first person) is still sure she doesn't want kids, but ends up getting involved with the family next door and taking care of her neighbor's child.

This book covers a very important topic in motherhood, particularly through the story of the friend that has a baby. It's a heartbreaking story in which the baby that is born has severe movement and cognitive disabilities, and the impact this has on the parents. I devoured this book in one morning.

BUT... I have to say that this book, for me, lacked emotional depth. From the premise alone (and further, considering the first-person narrator), this book should have floored me and made me cry throughout. I can't point my finger on the "why" this wasn't the case -- I am fairly embarrased to admit that I didn't feel any emotions whatsoever throughout the reading. Is it the translation? I don't think so, as some Spanish reviews mention this same lack of emotional depth in the original. I really don't know what it is, and I have delayed my review multiple days trying to come up with an answer, but to no avail.

This is an honest review based on a free eARC of this book. Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the free copy of the book.

Completely evocative. Fitzcarldo never fail to publish an outstanding novel. What a privilege to be able to read this in translation.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Fitzcarldo for the Arc. I can’t wait to see a copy when it comes out!

Books about motherhood can be a bit of a hit or miss for me (mostly miss) but this one was a pleasant surprise, I very much enjoyed it.

It is a magnificent piece of translated fiction about being a woman, a mother and often both at the same time. It's also about accepting life as it is, embracing situations and feelings the best way you can and finding out what works best for you and you alone.

I really liked all the characters included in this story, especially the women who were the most complex and fascinating of all. The writing is beautiful as well.

Thank you NetGalley and Fitzcarraldo for the eARC, it's one if the best books I've read this month and one I will remember fondly.

"There is a word to describe someone who loses their spouse, and a word for children who are left without parents. There is no word, however, for a parent who loses their child. Unlike previous centuries in which child mortality was very high, it's not normal for this to occur in our time. It is something so feared, so unacceptable, that we have chosen not to name it"

The protagonist read Alina's tarot cards when she was young, and pulled such dangerous cards out that she stopped doing readings. Years later, Alina changed her mind about having children and after a lot of medical intervention, fell pregnant. The story follows her discovery that her daughter will be born deeply under developed, and the constant challenges she faces fighting for her daughters rights, as well as her own conflicting feelings over the unexpected circumstances.

Nettel's story is award winning. It offers such a human approach to the difficulties prospective parents face and what happens when your child isn't born the way you initially expected. The book touches on loss, the public approach to disability and the fight of a parent who refuses to give in.

I cried, I laughed, overall it was wonderful.

Thank you NetGalley for the Arc.

Guadalupe Nettel explores maternal ambivalence with a surgeon’s touch, carefully dissecting the contradictions that make up the lived experiences of women. The storyline was very interesting and flowed nicely! I will definitely recommend reading this one! It was well worth reading! And thought provoking. Thank you Netgalley and the publisher for sharing this book with me!

Still Born is a beautiful, captivating novel about one of the key question of a female in adulthood, whether or not to have children.
The narrator is Laura is an independent women who in her mid-thirties has, despite her Mother’s disappointment, made the decision to be sterilised. Alina is her best friend, who had shared the view of being against childhood, but as times goes on she is drawn to Motherhood.
This is a parallel story. Laura begins to assist her neighbour Doris with the care of her young boy who is troubled by the loss of his father. Doris can’t take care of him anymore with the deterioration of her mental health. Does Laura step in and take him in?
Alina receieves the devastating news that her daughter is to die after she’s born, but how will she cope potentially caring for her daughter for the rest of her life as she defeats the diagnosis and survives.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It is a fight of complex emotions. Motherhood isn’t all it seems and there are always twists and turns along the way. I had it finished in just a couple of sittings.
I struggled sometimes with the novel all being from the point of view of Laura; I would get confused thinking it should have been Alina. I found the ending abrupt, I would liked for it to wrap up in maybe just a few more pages to get better closure. But in life, we don’t get closure and maybe it’s best to be left hanging and make your own decision as to how each should end.

I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys contemporary women’s fiction. I would give it 4 stars. I was kindly given a copy of this book by Netgallery in return for an honest review.

Still Born is a deeply-compelling exploration of motherhood and the maternal in numerous guises, from the conventional to the provisional and unanticipated. At its centre are two friends Laura, the narrator, and Alina. At first, they’re united in their distaste of any kind of future in which children play a role, comfortably going about their childfree lives set apart from the sect of “zombie-like” mothers. Laura’s working on her thesis, traveling between her base in Mexico City and the archives necessary for her research. When she finally settles in Mexico again, she finds that Alina's now desperate to conceive. But when the longed-for pregnancy finally happens, it’s not anything that Alina imagined it would be. Meanwhile Laura forges a bond with her neighbours, struggling, single mother Doris and her small son Nico, that also leads her somewhere unexpected. Their stories unfold against a backdrop of violence, in a country of marked inequality and femicide which haunts their consciousness and invades their sense of self.

It's a remarkably disciplined piece that deals with some challenging subjects from the possibility of mothering a child with profound disabilities to the legacy of male violence and its impact on the generations that follow. Guadalupe Nettel’s narrative's acutely observed, sometimes unsettling, sometimes tender. She approaches her material with admirable restraint. Her prose is quiet and coolly distanced at points in her story where lesser writers might resort to melodrama but which somehow adds to its intensity and emotional impact. Nettel’s an award-winning writer whose work’s been singled out on lists of significant authors by literary journals like Granta, and in 2007 she featured as one of the Bogotá 39, a list of the most promising Latin American writers under 39. If her other work is accomplished as this, then the acclaim’s more than deserved. Here her novel’s fluidly translated by Rosalind Harvey.
Rating: 4.5

PUBLISHER’S DESCRIPTION:
Still Born, Guadalupe Nettel's fourth novel, treats one of the most consequential decisions of early adulthood – whether or not to have children – with the intelligence and originality that have won her international acclaim.
Alina and Laura are independent and career-driven women in their mid-thirties, neither of whom have built their future around the prospect of a family. Laura has taken the drastic decision to be sterilized, but as time goes by Alina becomes drawn to the idea of becoming a mother. When complications arise in Alina’s pregnancy and Laura becomes attached to her neighbour’s son, both women are forced to reckon with the complexity of their emotions.
In prose that is as gripping as it is insightful, Guadalupe Nettel explores maternal ambivalence with a surgeon’s touch, carefully dissecting the contradictions that make up the lived experiences of women.

NO SPOILERS:
I am grateful to Fitzcarraldo Editions and NetGalley for this ARC but unfortunately I cannot write a favourable review. After all, not every book is for everybody.

In my opinion, this book could have been a fascinating exploration of the different ways to be a mother, but I found it was poorly written and wanted to abandon it. However, as I was reading for review, I did read it all.

To me, it reads like a formal report of just the facts and only the facts. “This happened, then this and then this, then this.” It seemed to be simple statements, not unlike witness statements in their detail, with no real depth. The language was very basic with no display of writing skill or craft. Perhaps this will appeal to some readers but not to me.

I have given two stars rather than one as I think re-written, this could be a wonderful, wonderful book.

Read through netgalley. An interesting account of motherhood and the unexpected. It’s not about meeting someone and having a baby but what happens when motherhood doesn’t go to plan and the complexities of these relationships.
It wasn’t quite what I thought it would be and some of the language was a little dated but the story was important nonetheless. I’m not sure if the language is a translation thing but it’s the only thing that lets it down tbh.

Sometimes life doesn’t work out as you planned. And sometimes that’s ok.

Two women, best friends, who never intended to have children. But Alina’s views change as she gets older, leading to a difficult, life-changing pregnancy that neither she nor the doctors foresaw. Meanwhile Laura unexpectedly starts taking on a mothering role to her neighbour’s child.

I really enjoyed this. It’s messy and complicated, and people change their minds and love their children to bits, even as they think the worst or feel guilty or can’t cope. It’s a very different and non-judgmental look at motherhood and non-motherhood and mothering, set against the backdrop of Mexico City, and a society which expects a woman to become a biological mother.

The writing feels very real - the main character talks like a close friend, while, when she tells Alina’s story it feels almost like a human-interest news report. And yet somehow it works to build a very affecting story without being manipulative or mawkish. Major content warnings for everything around pregnancies that don’t work out as expected.

Thank you to NetGalley and Fitzcarraldo Editions who gave me this as a free ARC. I read it in the space of an evening, which is very unusual.

I thought this was very good indeed - I couldn't put it down. The writing and translation are wonderful - clear and stark. You're propelled along by two main storylines. The first is about the narrator, Laura, watching a pair of pigeons raise a baby that may or may not be theirs in her apartment patio, while befriending the neighbour's son across the hallway. The second follows Laura's friend Alina, who gets pregnant and has a difficult birth (to say the least). Alina's story in particular is very gripping, almost like a horror story. It definitely plays with some of your worst fears about having a child. I couldn't help but read her sections with bated breath; the tension was awful. Laura's sections are a bit more chill and provide a nice counterpoint to Alina's. Overall, this is a really interesting look at motherhood that isn't coming down too hard on one side or the other (i.e. pro motherhood or anti motherhood), it's simply an examination of a basic stage of life for many women. I especially liked the section that discussed how several dolphin females raise the baby, instead of just one.

A very readable, sensitive, and intelligent book.

Thanks to the publishers and Netgalley for the ARC.

Still Born follows Laura and Alina, long-time friends who both agree that they don’t want children. Until Alina changes her mind.

A very interior book about motherhood, with a small cast of characters. It’s about the choices that you make, and the life that happens regardless of these. The relationships between the characters are real and messy but tender and heart-warming.

Nettel is a gorgeous writer who manages to completely immerse you in her world. They manage to take serious, heavy matters and turn them into a hopeful, inspiring novel.

This is a beautiful book that I adored and will be recommending to everyone.

The novel ponders on the topic of motherhood and the plot is thought provoking. The story entwines the lives of the characters and how motherhood touches upon them. Totally beautiful and a 5 star read.

Delicate, beautiful, troubling, brave, devastating: I loved it.

Maybe some of the metaphors are a little on the nose but somehow they work; it explores so many aspects of motherhood and caretaking, I'm sure I'll be thinking about it for a while.

My thanks to Fitzcarraldo Editions and NetGalley for the ARC.

This book is amazing. I finished it this morning and I'm still thinking about the entwined lives of the characters. 5 stars without a doubt.