The Patter of Tiny Feat; Every New Mum Is Swamped in a World of Nappies, Milk and Cots, yet Dare Not Speak of Them. Now Anne Enright Is Breaking All Those Taboos. By Jennifer Cunningham
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Summary
It's the sheer banality of the early days and weeks and months and years of motherhood that stops us making more of it. The dismal nature of conversations on the technicalities of nappies and baby buggies which so engross those serious, competent mothers is so off- putting that it becomes a barrier to friendship. The miracle of each day, despite the tears and tribulations, is not something you're encouraged to discuss.
All mothers, new and old, should communally salute Anne Enright for turning the banal into the miraculous. The Irish novelist, who had her first baby at 37, takes motherhood and writing equally seriously. In the post-natal fug of birth and baby and breast- feeding, she sat down to write and found that she could not write fiction, only record - in the small slots of time available - observations from her new mother-self.See the full content of this document
Extract
The Patter of Tiny Feat; Every New Mum Is Swamped in a World of Nappies, Milk and Cots, yet Dare Not Speak of Them. Now Anne Enright Is Breaking All Those Taboos. By Jennifer Cunningham
The first article published in the Dublin Review provoked such a torrent of response from readers that it became important to continue, to write how it was. As she says in the introduction to the collection of essays that has turned into a book, that time is f...
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