60. We Need to Talk about Kevin, Lionel Shriver
This book is so painfully beautiful and breath-taking. It makes me question my own disinterest of having children and the preconception that women naturally have maternal instict.
"You know, it is different when its yours. You cant go home."
"Infants have great intuition, because intuitions about all they'v got. I felt certain that he could detect a telltale stiffening in my arms when I picked him up. I was confident that he could infer from my subtly exasperated quality in my voice when I burbled and cooed that burbling and cooing did not come naturally to me and that his precocious ear could isolate in that endless stream of placating blather in insidious, compulsive sarcasm."
"Since I last wrote, I've been rooting around in my mental attic for my original reservation about motherhood. I do recall a tumult of fears, though all the wrong ones. Had I catalogued the downside of parenthood, 'son might turn out killer', would never have turned up on the list. Rather, it might have looked something like this:
1. Hassle
2. Less time just the two of us. (Try no time just the two of us)
3. Other people. (PTA meetings. Ballet teachers. The kids insufferable friends and their insufferable parents.)
4. Turning into a cow (I was slight, and preferred to stay that way. My sister in law had developed bulging varicose veins in her legs during pregnancy that never retreated, and the prospect of calves branched in blue tree roots mortified me more than I could say. So I didn't say. I am vain, or once was, and one of my vanities was to feign that I was not.)
5. Unnatural altruism: being forced to make decisions in accordance with what was best for someone else. (I'm a pig)
6. Curtailment of my traveling (Note curtailment. Not conclusion).
7. Dementing boredom (I found small children brutally dull. I did, even at the outset, admit this to myself)
8. Worthless social life. (I had never had a decent conversations with a friend's five-year-old in the room.)
9. Social demotion. ( I was respected entrepreneur. Once I had a toddler in tow, every man I knew - every woman too, which is depressing, would take me less seriously.)
10. Paying the piper. (Parenthood repays a debt. But who wants to pay a debt she can escape? Apparently. the childess get away with something sneaky. Besides, what good is repaying a debt to the wrong party? Only the most warped mother could feel rewarded for her trouble by the fact that at last her daughter's life is hideous, too.)
"You know, it is different when its yours. You cant go home."
"Infants have great intuition, because intuitions about all they'v got. I felt certain that he could detect a telltale stiffening in my arms when I picked him up. I was confident that he could infer from my subtly exasperated quality in my voice when I burbled and cooed that burbling and cooing did not come naturally to me and that his precocious ear could isolate in that endless stream of placating blather in insidious, compulsive sarcasm."
"Since I last wrote, I've been rooting around in my mental attic for my original reservation about motherhood. I do recall a tumult of fears, though all the wrong ones. Had I catalogued the downside of parenthood, 'son might turn out killer', would never have turned up on the list. Rather, it might have looked something like this:
1. Hassle
2. Less time just the two of us. (Try no time just the two of us)
3. Other people. (PTA meetings. Ballet teachers. The kids insufferable friends and their insufferable parents.)
4. Turning into a cow (I was slight, and preferred to stay that way. My sister in law had developed bulging varicose veins in her legs during pregnancy that never retreated, and the prospect of calves branched in blue tree roots mortified me more than I could say. So I didn't say. I am vain, or once was, and one of my vanities was to feign that I was not.)
5. Unnatural altruism: being forced to make decisions in accordance with what was best for someone else. (I'm a pig)
6. Curtailment of my traveling (Note curtailment. Not conclusion).
7. Dementing boredom (I found small children brutally dull. I did, even at the outset, admit this to myself)
8. Worthless social life. (I had never had a decent conversations with a friend's five-year-old in the room.)
9. Social demotion. ( I was respected entrepreneur. Once I had a toddler in tow, every man I knew - every woman too, which is depressing, would take me less seriously.)
10. Paying the piper. (Parenthood repays a debt. But who wants to pay a debt she can escape? Apparently. the childess get away with something sneaky. Besides, what good is repaying a debt to the wrong party? Only the most warped mother could feel rewarded for her trouble by the fact that at last her daughter's life is hideous, too.)
