Mama Lit — The Missing Genre

We need suggestions of books for clever but tired women

Ellie Levenson
Books Are Our Superpower

--

Photo by Sinitta Leunen on Unsplash

I have three kids — the youngest is ten — and after each child it has taken me ages to get back my reading mojo. I was so tired and all consumed by the babies, none of whom slept well, that despite having studied English Literature, the idea of starting to read a novel, let alone finishing it, was just too much.

But it did come back, slowly at first, gaining pace as my brain remembered the joy it gets from a good novel. And I realised that there is a genre missing in the signage of libraries and bookshops — Mama Lit, not just for mamas of course, but for anyone who likes intelligent fiction but is also tired from the demands of their domestic or work lives.

Books that fall into the Mama Lit category have diverse subject areas, but they do have things in common. They are not too long, not too complicated, and not too scary — we have enough things waking us up at night so don’t want to introduce anything that stops us getting to sleep in the first place. This doesn't mean that interesting or disturbing subjects have no place in Mama Lit, in fact all of the books I have put in this category of mine have elements of this, but they don’t have edge-of-your-seat read-through-your-fingers scenes that will play out again and again in your head. Or at least they didn’t for me.

Here are some of my favourite Mama Lit books. More will follow in future posts, and I’d love to see suggestions of others that fit the category too.

Tales of the City by Armistead Maupin

This collection of nine books which should definitely be read in order, were among the first novels I read after having my second child. The chapters were short, the characters clear, it was fun even when sad, and far enough away from my own world to give me a sense of escapism. I also learnt a new word — nonet (a series of nine)— and when I tweeted Armistead Maupin to compliment him on his nonet, he said it was a new word for him too, which made me very happy indeed.

My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite

This is very clever, darkly funny and a year on I am still thinking how the author took us on the journey with her. It’s also very short and easy to read, which is good when you are starting to read again and need to feel a sense of achievement and actually finish something, and although the subject is grisly, it is funny grisly not grisly grisly.

The Trick to Time by Kit de Waal

On the whole if a book is about the death of a child then it isn’t really Mama Lit, as new parents are not the most emotionally robust of people. But this book is also about love and hope and forgiveness and life, and I thought it hauntingly beautiful. I loved her previous novel too, ‘My Name is Leon’, which also covers difficult subject matter for new parents, and I think about both of these books often.

My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh

I read this on a long train journey in February 2020. I had recently been asked by someone just how much sleep I thought I needed in order to recover from my sleepless decade as a mother. “About one hundred years”, I answered. Then I read this and decided a year would probably just about be enough, if one hundred were not possible, though I don’t think the book is meant to elicit jealousy so much as distaste. Of course I wasn’t to know then that we were about to enter a global pandemic with an enforced year of rest, even if lockdown with kids means very little relaxation.

--

--

I am a writer and lecturer based in the UK, writing for adults as Ellie Levenson and for children as Eleanor Levenson.