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Reading lists

Books to read if you’re expecting a baby

Milk, sweat and tears from the frontline of motherhood

Holding the Baby

'My favourite person on the politics of parenthood. Read it and feel comforted, cheered and galvanized (even when your brain and body are melting).'

'Exhilarating, infuriating, urgent and human ... an excellent journalistic investigation. I think this book is required reading for the child free, as it will help us to understand and support the choices of all parents.'

'A blazing, brilliant read, combining style and message to powerful effect ... compassionate, convincing and funny.'

'Honest, unflinching and necessary - alleviates parental guilt and might even encourage you to forgive your own!'

'Holding the Baby is the sanest, most gorgeous thing on capitalism's poisonous effect on parenthood I've ever read. I was hooting and hollering by the manifesto at the end. Because it's Nell Frizzell it's funny and brisk and also because it's Nell Frizzell it's urgent and incisive. It opens your eyes to a vastly healthier and utterly beautiful way to support babies (and people who used to be babies.) I'm grateful for this book.'

'I love Nell Frizzell's writing and I love her spirit. I devoured Holding the Baby, especially the way it combined the colour of a memoir with the intent of a manifesto. Nell has such an original, forceful and also, crucially, very funny take on parenthood in general and motherhood specifically. This is a timely and important book.'

Nell Frizzell is a writer, journalist and Vogue columnist. She has written and worked for the Guardian, VICE, The Sunday Times, Elle, the BBC, the Observer, Grazia and The Independent among many others. Her first book, The Panic Years, was an exploration of bodies, babies and the big questions facing modern life. Her debut novel, Square One, painted a humorous picture of moving home, fathers and daughters and surviving heartbreak. She lives in Oxford, in a very small house full of pasta and bedding and bikes.

'My favourite person on the politics of parenthood' Pandora Sykes 
 
'Exhilarating, infuriating, urgent and human' Daisy Buchanan 
 
'A blazing, brilliant read ... compassionate, convincing, funny!' Amy Liptrot 
 
'Honest, unflinching and necessary' Sara Pascoe 
 
'Funny and brisk ... urgent and incisive' Rob Delaney 
 
'A timely and important book' Clover Stroud 
 
It's time to share the motherload. 
 
A memoir culminating in a manifesto, Holding the Baby sets out to understand why we still treat early parenthood as an individual slog rather than a shared cultural responsibility. Tracing her own journey to the nadir of sleeplessness via social retreat and murderous rage, Frizzell draws on the latest research to explore: 
 
- What effect does parenting have on your career? 
 
- How can we make childcare affordable and fit for purpose? 
 
- If parenting is so hard, why does anyone ever do it more than once? 
 
Funny, reassuring and radically ambitious, Holding the Baby sheds light on the ways in which we fail new parents, and offers a rallying crying that we fight for a better alternative.

Square One

Electrifyingly good...sharply comic and perfectly poignant

Keenly observed and hecking funny, this is a book for our times

A fresh, funny novel filled with truths about relationships and perfect details. I tore though it

The #HOTMESS manifesto... a relatable story about a slow-mo car crash of early 30s.

Witty and heart-warming, we couldn't put this book down

A smart and witty portrait of modern female relationships

A funny and charming novel full of fresh observations, tenderness and hope

Katy Wix, author of Delicacy and star of Stath Lets Flats and Ghosts

'Electrifyingly good...sharply comic and perfectly poignant' Daisy Buchanan, author of Insatiable 
 
------------------- 
Everyone is moving on... and then, there's Hanna 
 
By thirty, Hanna expected to have it all (or at least some of it) 
 
· A fulfilling and successful career 
 
· A healthy, long-term relationship, maybe even an engagement ring 
 
· A house (or at least a flat) of her own 
 
But in reality, she's back at square one... 
 
· Single after breaking up with someone she's not sure ever loved her 
 
· Flooded with wedding invitations and pregnancy scan pictures from friends 
 
· Unable to afford to live on her own and forced to move in with her father who is also single and dating 
 
Everyone moves at different paces, but Hanna's life is in reverse. With the pressure to keep up and her dad's insufferable musings on Tinder, will she be able to figure out what she really wants?

dates, doubts and the mother of all decisions

The Panic Years

'A compassionate, funny and beautifully written exploration of contemporary womanhood - the book may have 'panic' in the title, but Nell's words calmed and soothed me deeply.' - Daisy Buchanan

Nell Frizzell's thoughts on womanhood and motherhood are as informative as they are poetic. Writing that challenges and enlightens you just as much as it entertains and stimulates you is rare, this book confidently does both on an important and complicated topic for modern women.

Searingly honest, witty and moving. For anyone who knows what it's like to simultaneously want to weep with joy and throw your child out of the window, Frizzell is a very welcome voice in the conversation on motherhood.

There is so much about womanhood that feels indefinable. And yet with her definitions of the flux, and the panic years, Nell manages to define the indefinable - as well as uniting childfree women and mothers, where the two are so often pitted against one another. Lyrical, moving and thorough, this is a memoir, a feminist text and a piece of social commentary. Every millennial woman should have it on her bookshelf.

Wonderful... touching, helpful and enlightening.

A compassionate, funny and beautifully written exploration of contemporary womanhood - the book may have 'panic' in the title, but Nell's words calmed and soothed me deeply.

Nell Frizzell is a master. In The Panic Years, she picks you up and drops you deep inside herself and makes you see what she sees and feel what she feels in a manner that is both jarring and beautiful. I particularly recommend this book to men as it will start to heal the rift between the sexes that capitalism has – if not created – nourished and exploited. This book is a visceral exploration of one young woman’s life that has immediately applicable lessons for us all. Vital reading. Lest my trumpeting make you worry it’s only “important,” The Panic Years is also fun, funny, and warm. I love it dearly!

Rob Delaney, writer and star of Catastrophe

Heartening, eye-opening, hilarious. I'm glad Nell has given this weird time a term we can all use.

Smart and perceptive...Written with real humour and consideration for the point at which every woman is in their life, this is a must-read for 2021.

Stylist, best new non-fiction for 2021

Frizzell's compassionate, compulsive prose fizzes with imaginative humour and metaphor. A memoir that's funny and heartfelt, personal and political.

One of the most gripping, beautiful and euphoric glimpses of motherhood that I have ever read. Frizzell is an engaging and endearing narrator of this poignant memoir.

Lively, informative... Nell uses her own experience generously and the effect is inclusive, reassuring and funny. She articulates feelings I've had but never quite explored - it's excellent

Incredibly relatable and comforting, addressing the constant comparison and confusion women often face. Frizzell writes beautifully and poetically while reassuring and validating the reader's concerns with hilarious anecdotes from her own panic years. This is an important read for all women who are wondering what should come next, and when.

The Panic Years made me laugh and it made me cry. There’s a rare tenderness to this book that comes from not having felt seen before. It’s for our generation, and Nell gets it. She understands and respects us.

A wonderful, candid memoir about the personal and political implications of motherhood, full of humour and fizzing prose. I loved it.

Luiza Sauma, author of Flesh and Bone and Everything You Ever Wanted

For someone older, in a different set of panic years altogether, part of the pleasure of this book lies in reminiscence, reflecting and reframing. But it’s also galvanising, engaging and enraging. The personal is political, philosophical, emotional, and very funny. I resisted the urge to highlight everything that made me laugh, or think, or fired me up, because the whole thing would have been one big neon block

Informs, educates, entertains... This book will resonate with so many readers.

A must-read... sharp, funny, it chronicles all of the big decisions a woman is expected to make between the ages of 25-40: where to live, if they should marry, what to do with one's career. And that other biggie: to have a baby or not.

Ab-definingly funny, The Panic Years captures the female experience perfectly. Discussing all of the large, looming decisions women have to make between their late 20s and early 40s, this is a must-read.

Offers advice and feminist learnings on how to survive when it feels like everyone around you is becoming a parent.

Wise, perceptive and refreshingly open...a memoir that feels inherently personal to womanhood and what being a woman means.

A must read. Timely, honest, brave and funny calling for a new kind of conversation about love, work and parenthood.

'As informative as it is poetic' Dolly Alderton 
'Compassionate, funny and beautifully written' Daisy Buchanan 
 
------------------------------ 
 
Every woman will experience the panic years in some way between her mid-twenties and early-forties. 
 
This maddening period of transformation and personal crisis is recognisable by the myriad of decisions we make - about partners, holidays, jobs, homes, savings, friendships - all of which are impacted by the urgency of the single decision that comes with a biological deadline, the one decision that is impossible to take back; whether or not to have a baby. 
 
But how to stay sane in such a maddening time? How to know who you are and what you might want from life? How to know if you're making the right decisions? 
 
Raw, hilarious and beguilingly honest, Nell Frizzell's account of her panic years is both an arm around the shoulder and a campaign to start a conversation. This affects us all - women, men, mothers, children, partners, friends, colleagues - so it's time we started talking about it with a little more candour. 
 
WHAT READERS ARE SAYING 
 
- 'Loved this book! Highly recommend for any woman (or man!) during the weird time in your 20s' ***** 
- 'Those panicky feelings of being a 24-30 something put into words' ***** 
- 'This book brings forth a sigh of relief. Excellent book that really taps into what so many of us are thinking and feeling, but not saying' *****

Nell Frizzell

Smart and funny, it had me from page one

Reliably compelling, always insightful and very entertaining writing from the wonderful Nell Frizzell

Cuckoo is so warm, tender and beautiful . . . This is a spellbinding story about love, families and what makes us truly grow up. I adored it

Carefully observed and sensitively described . . . poignant

This was stunning . . . a really different kind of 'found family' novel. I was so invested in the characters by the end that I kept picking up the book again to see if there was any more

Nell has that special ability to write about the most true, most slippery parts of life in a deliciously frank, simple and frequently hilarious way - she'll make you laugh, cry and think

A frank and funny exploration of family

Nell Frizzell is one of our funniest and most observant writers - how lucky we are to have her

The wondrous Nell Frizzell does 'when ancestry,com goes wrong' (great premise) with very entertaining weird family results

Funny and full of life and ideas, reading Nell Frizzell is like meeting a new friend

After Nancy’s father dies, she is faced with two life-changing revelations. 
 
One: She has a half-brother she knew nothing about. 
 
Nancy’s world is punched inside out at the discovery of a mysterious new sibling. But she can’t help but feel curious about Oliver, this stranger who shares her DNA. Her sister Rita, on the other hand, is furious and wants nothing to do with their ‘cuckoo’ brother. 
 
Two: She’s pregnant. 
 
The father – Nancy’s not-quite-boyfriend from her not-quite-relationship – doesn’t want to commit any time soon. He isn’t even in the same continent as her right now. And with her mother and sister in shock about Oliver, Nancy’s struggling to find someone to turn to for support. 
 
In a tumult of grief, fear and hope, Nancy pushes herself into an uncertain future as she rethinks what really makes a family. But there’s one more thought in the back of her head… 
 
Is there space in her family for two more?

Nell Frizzell

Books by Nell Frizzell

Articles featuring Nell Frizzell

Books to read if you’re expecting a baby

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