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Until I had my first child, and this is to my shame, I had little understanding of just how much mothers are hidden, their stories unspoken, even as they cross the street in plain sight.
Like grief or falling in love, becoming a mother is an experience both ordinary and transformative. You are prepared for the sleeplessness and wonder, the noise and the chaos, the pram in the hall. But the extent to which this new life can turn your inner world upside-down – nothing prepares you for that.
In this frank, funny and fearless memoir, Marianne Levy writes with heart-wrenching honesty about love and loss, rage and pain, fear and joy. She breaks the silence around the emotional turmoil that having a child can unleash and asks why motherhood is at once so venerated and so undervalued.
This is the real story of being a parent in the modern world. It is a book that mothers will be glad to have read – and that everyone else should read, too.
Like grief or falling in love, becoming a mother is an experience both ordinary and transformative. You are prepared for the sleeplessness and wonder, the noise and the chaos, the pram in the hall. But the extent to which this new life can turn your inner world upside-down – nothing prepares you for that.
In this frank, funny and fearless memoir, Marianne Levy writes with heart-wrenching honesty about love and loss, rage and pain, fear and joy. She breaks the silence around the emotional turmoil that having a child can unleash and asks why motherhood is at once so venerated and so undervalued.
This is the real story of being a parent in the modern world. It is a book that mothers will be glad to have read – and that everyone else should read, too.
Reviews
I read Marianne's book with a constricted throat and welling eyes. Her writing cuts to the quick - so deep, direct, and moving but also wry and funny, often provoking a choked laugh. These essays tug and prod at what it means to be a mother - the 'messy cat's cradle of womanhood' - in the most intimate, powerful and painfully honest way, leaving me ravaged, occasionally enraged, but also feeling profoundly seen
Phenomenal. Words like 'searing' and 'extraordinary' and 'blistering' will be used about this book, and they will not convey one tenth of the strength of it, nor the honesty nor the bravery in writing it
Honest, witty, powerful and moving . . . an important book brimming with hard-won wisdom
A brave, unflinching, utterly necessary book. I'm in awe of what it must have taken to write these searing and all too recognisable essays
I laughed, I cried and I haven't stopped thinking about it since. A brave, moving, brilliantly-written and often funny exploration of what it means to be a mother. I want everyone to read it
A remarkable book, cutting to the quick of what motherhood really feels like - the terror and the rage and the joy of it. The mundane rubs shoulders with the life-changing, the damply humdrum is shot through with calamitous love. I've read so much about motherhood, but I've never read anything as sharply honest as this; mothers will find themselves here
Brilliant, funny, heartbreaking, and true, Marianne Levy's Don't Forget to Scream had me exploring my own experience of motherhood in an entirely new way. I simply can't stop thinking about it.
How I wish this book existed when I was a mother of young children. Each essay executes a brilliant swallow-dive from the enervating everyday of parenting into deep waters of profound and unorthodox thought. This is exciting, emboldening writing
An excellent book . . . elegant, funny, raw and beautiful. It made me angry with myself and the world but it also made laugh. Compulsive reading
A gut-punch of recollections about early motherhood . . . Incredible, honest writing that gets to the heart of the experience. It's wonderful
A remarkable memoir, threaded with humour and tenderness, and yet exposing the often crushing loneliness and unfairness of motherhood. A must-read for fathers and prospective fathers, this book made me wish I could go back in time and do parenting differently
Don't Forget to Scream is a work of painful genius. Exquisitely written, totally honest, insightful and alternately hilarious and moving. I don't have or want children and might not have picked the book up, thinking it's not "for" me. Which would have been a big mistake. Huge. The beauty of reading is in allowing a skilful writer to not only lead you into their world but picture yourself there. This is what Don't Forget To Scream achieves, and it's utterly compelling
A beautifully, and at times agonisingly, honest confessional. Moving, funny, poignant and inciteful: Marianne's reflections shine a light on both the joys and lies about parenthood with which we're all complicit. This is This is Going To Hurt from the other side of the bed
Brilliant, brave, honest (and sometimes very funny) . . . Don't Forget To Scream should be read by anyone who has a mother
Don't Forget To Scream is funny and heartbreaking - a powerful portrayal of all that makes up motherhood. It feels both intimate and profoundly universal
A staggeringly, ferociously good book - unflinching but humane, real and funny and courageous, and vitally questioning. I wish we lived in a world where it didn't need to be written
I loved these sharp, unusual essays about motherhood and cried my way through much of the book. Childbirth, desire, consumerism and marketing of baby stuff, deciding to have a second child, goldfish. Recommended
Marianne Levy's Don't Forget to Scream tells the truth of modern motherhood like nothing else I've read. Bold, brave and brilliant, it is also full of humour, joy and warmth. I loved it
