THIS IS WHY WE CAN'T HAVE NICE THINGS

A socially astute collection about the pleasures and perils of motherhood.

Triangulating the roles that many women with children play—as mothers, wives, and professionals—these stories smartly ask whether women can successfully pull off all three. In “Comorbidities,” winner of the BBC Short Story Prize, the narrator’s love for her children comes at the price of her fierce desire for her husband. When they finally do share an intimate moment, she almost cries, contemplating “how much [they] had both lost, the price [they] had paid.” In “Lesley, in Therapy,” a woman suffering from extreme postpartum depression cuts short her parental leave, only to realize that work isn’t the solution—not only because her job can’t lift her malaise, but also because of the absence of real structural support for mothers. When Lesley complains about her work load, which is supposed to be lighter after having a baby, the therapist leading her company’s Group Therapy for Returning Parents counsels her to “focus on the here and now, and what we can change.” “We all want to leave,” a woman in “A/A/A/A/” tells a friend who has just learned that her husband has left her for another woman. “No one wants to stay. But they’re the grand love affair, in the end. The kids.” While women bear the burden of family life in many of these stories—and some readers will surely experience PTSD reading “Flatten the Curve,” about parenting through the Covid-19 lockdown—they’re not saints. What’s true horror, wonders the pregnant director in “Dracula at the Movies” as she cruelly manipulates her star into a good performance—being the victim, or the perpetrator? While a few stories get bogged down by elaborate, slightly boring work situations, this is a deft account of the huge toll of trying to have everything.

A must-read for working mothers—for whom reading might be a luxury they can’t afford.