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The mixed-up matter of maternal instinct
Still Born is a novel that reckons with the many complications of motherhood with extraordinary grace. In limpid prose, Guadalupe Nettel, as translated by Rosalind Harvey, offers various epiphanies about becoming a parent. “We have the children that we have, not the ones we imagined we’d have, or the ones we’d have liked,” is one crucial statement voiced by the narrator, Laura, a PhD student in her mid-thirties, who speaks with an almost omniscient clarity.
Her main observations involve the trials experienced by her friend, Alina, a curator, who is desperate to have a baby. Originally, Laura feels betrayed when Alina announces this desire. They have, after all, spent years bonding over their mutual desire to be childless. Laura has recently been sterilised to ensure this. But, while supporting Alina with difficulties that arise during her pregnancy, Laura acknowledges her own fraught maternal instincts. Encounters with her next-door neighbours further force her to
