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Stories
by Polly Rosenwaike
A candid, ultimately buoyant debut story collection about the realities of the "baby years," whether you're having one or not.
The women in Polly Rosenwaike's Look How Happy I'm Making You want to be mothers, or aren't sure they want to be mothers, or - having recently given birth - are overwhelmed by what they've wrought. Sharp and unsettling, wry and moving in its depiction of love, friendship, and family, this collection expands the conversation about what having a baby looks like.
One woman struggling with infertility deals with the news that her sister is pregnant. Another woman nervous about her biological clock "forgets" to take her birth control while dating a younger man and must confront the possibility of becoming a single parent. Four motherless women who meet in a bar every Mother's Day contend with their losses and what it would mean to have a child.
Witty, empathetic, and precisely observed, Look How Happy I'm Making You offers the rare, honest portrayal of pregnancy and new motherhood in a culture obsessed with women's most intimate choices.
"Starred Review. An exquisite collection that is candid, compassionate, and emotionally complex." - Kirkus
"Rosenwaike's edgy stories are endearingly honest, excruciatingly detailed, and irresistibly intimate, expertly depicting what motherhood means to millennials." - Publishers Weekly
"While the stories are all connected by motherhood, each explores additional themes: changing friendships, aging, defining family, building a life, and more. Whether parents or not, readers who love short literary fiction will connect with Look How Happy I'm Making You." - Booklist
"A beautifully written and beautifully conceived series of stories about, well, conception...Among the thousands of books for prospective and new parents, I doubt any will make you feel more understood and less alone than this one." - Anthony Doerr, author of All The Light We Cannot See
I rejoiced in this collection. A radical, unflinching cycle of stories that radiate with truth and depth and care. I could weep for how good it is to see such rich, profound narratives about women's reproductive lives. Happy tears." - Elisa Albert, author of After Birth
"With incisive pluck, Rosenwaike's stories turn an empathetic and humorous eye on the time in women's lives when the question of motherhood' - whether gained or lost or desired at all' - is central. Rosenwaike fearlessly plumbs the depths of women's interior lives, giving due space to their complexity, gravity, and lightness." - Danielle Lazarin, author of Back Talk
"The world wants one story: pregnant glow, new mother tired but ever-grateful, ever-in-love. Without shying away from any of the transcendent and true beauty, Look How Happy I'm Making You shows us the many shadowed layers of pregnancy, miscarriage, birth and motherhood with an insistent bravery and searing honesty - Ramona Ausubel, author of Awayland
This information about Look How Happy I'm Making You was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Polly Rosenwaike has published stories, essays, and reviews in The O. Henry Prize Stories 2013, The New York Times Book Review, Glimmer Train, New England Review, The Millions, and the San Francisco Chronicle. The fiction editor for Michigan Quarterly Review, she lives in Ann Arbor with the poet Cody Walker and their two daughters.
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