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Imprint: Vintage Digital
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Published: 06/06/2019
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ISBN: 9781473561687
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Length: 288 Pages
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RRP: £14.99
‘Heart-wrenching, heart-warming and heartfelt – Mother Ship is a beautifully crafted, warts-and-all love letter to our wonderful NHS’ Adam Kay, author of This is Going to Hurt
‘Our greatest gift to one another is this: each woman here has been swept out by a riptide, pulled far from the current of normal motherhood. Apart and all together in this space, our odd craft, we are drawn back into the folds of the unremarkable.’
After her identical twin girls are born ten weeks prematurely, Francesca Segal finds herself sitting vigil in the ‘mother ship’ of neonatal intensive care, all romantic expectations of new parenthood obliterated. Her gripping diary of those months combines the tenderness of a love poem with the compulsive pace of a thriller. As each day brings a fresh challenge for her and her babies, Francesca makes a temporary life among a band of mothers who are vivid, fearless, and inspiring, taking care not only of their children but of one another.
MOTHER SHIP is an intimate, raucous, sublime and electrifying memoir. It is a hymn to the sustaining power of women’s friendships, and a loving celebration of the two small girls – and their mother – who defy the odds.
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Imprint: Vintage Digital
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Published: 06/06/2019
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ISBN: 9781473561687
-
Length: 288 Pages
-
RRP: £14.99
Reviews
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"Heart-wrenching, heart-warming and heartfelt – Mother Ship is a beautifully crafted, warts-and-all love letter to our wonderful NHS"
Adam Kay
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"I was bowled over by the beauty and terror of Mother Ship. I’m in awe of Francesca Segal’s honesty and courage, never mind her sublime, subtle writing. This is a vital, necessary book, not just about motherhood but about survival, care and the sustaining power of women in adversity"
Olivia Laing
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"I can't think of another book I have read recently that has made me laugh and cry so much. It is full of wisdom, and humour."
Sathnam Sanghera
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"A beautiful memoir: wise, moving and profoundly humane. Segal writes with such exquisite clarity that each word is a gift, each sentence a votive offering. Mother Ship moved me to tears, but it also taught me the unassailable power of decency and kindness when life is at its most fragile and vulnerable. A book that left me changed for having read it"
Elizabeth Day
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"Even if I wasn't a new mother, I would have found Mother Ship absorbing and emotionally charged, but reading it in bursts while my own baby was napping, it was almost unbearably painful – and beautiful too. Almost every chapter brought tears to my eyes as we learned of the twins' hard-won developments. I'm so glad Francesca managed to capture this difficult time – her book is a beacon of hope."
Amy Liptrot, author of The Outrun
