Sad Mum Lady

‘If people knew how bad this was,’ I said to a friend two weeks after the birth, nipples flashing red like emergency lights under my dressing-gown, ‘they would be sterilised on their thirteenth birthdays.’

It sometimes feels like there’s a rule for parents: if you’re going to say anything mildly unhappy about parenting, you must also be at pains to stress that it is all worth it. What joy! What wonder! How lucky we are! But then there’s the crying. And the body horror. The tearing and the leaking. And the crippling isolation. And the sleep deprivation. And somehow a dead rat in the cubbyhouse and the endless judgement of peers and neighbours and the internet.

But fear not. Ashe Davenport is here. And she’s not afraid to say it’s fucked. Unapologetic and frank, Sad Mum Lady navigates the joys of motherhood in ways that will be familiar, hilarious and essential reading for parents and non-parents alike. Savage, true and deeply relatable—finally, a book that resists the sanitised, acceptable face of parenting. You might not feel better, but at least you’ll feel less alone.

‘If David Sedaris and Sheila Heti had a baby . . . well, there’s a lot to unpack there. But the ensuing stories would be brutal and hilarious and endlessly readable. And they’d look a bit like Sad Mum Lady.’ MICHAEL WILLIAMS

‘Ashe Davenport captures the complexity of motherhood with astonishing humour, candour and humanity.’ GEORGIE DENT

‘As sharp and painful as LEGO underfoot, but infinitely funnier.’ JESSICA DETTMANN

‘I laughed. I cried. I got a vasectomy.’ RYAN SHELTON