My Work

by Olga Ravn, Jennifer Russell (Translator), Sophia Hersi Smith (Translator)

From the acclaimed author of the International Booker Prize–shortlisted literary sensation, The Employees , comes a radical, funny, and mercilessly honest novel about motherhood.
Anna is utterly lost. Still in shock after the birth of her son, she moves to snowbound Stockholm with her newborn and boyfriend, where a chasm soon opens between the couple. Lonely and isolated, Anna reads too many internet articles and shops for clothes she cannot afford. To avoid sinking deeper into her depression, she must read and write herself back into her proper place in the world.
My Work is a fervent, intimate, and compulsive examination of the relationship between motherhood, writing, and everyday life. In a mesmerizing, propulsive blend of prose, poetry, journal entries, and letters, Olga Ravn probes the pain, postpartum depression, housework, shopping, mundanity, and anxiety of motherhood, all the while celebrating the unbounded that comes from the love in a parent and child relationship—and rediscovering oneself through art.

Genres: Fiction, Feminism, Poetry, Danish, Literary Fiction, Contemporary, Denmark

390 pages, Paperback

First published September 4, 2020

About the author

Olga Sofia Ravn is a Danish poet and novelist. Initially she published poetry which was acclaimed by the critics, as was her first novel Celestine. She is also a translator and has worked as a literary critic for Politiken and several other Danish publications.

Reviews

[emma]

can't stop reading lit fic about motherhood

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

My Work is undoubtedly a monumental achievement, an impressive gathering together of forms as much as it is an ode to Lessing. This is one woman's account of pregnancy, childbirth, and early motherhood - an account that weaves together experiences and genres, while also collapsing time and linearity. Poetry sits alongside prose, sits alongside pregnancy journal, sits alongside autofiction, etc. We have multiple beginnings, continuations, endings. There's a quaintness to this book, though, a conversation very much at ease with an earlier mode of feminism, perhaps less contemporary than one might hope to see published now. In some ways, this can be read as a companion to After Sappho, another unabashedly feminist novel that is more innovative formally than it is current in theory. But I see My Work less as an anachronism and more as a capstone, a gathering together of Lessing, Zambreno, Shelley, and a host of others in a form that points the way forward. It looks backwards, yes, but it can also be the formal foundation from which I hope future writers draw inspiration to bring other stories into an ongoing conversation about motherhood, womanhood, gender, sexuality, class, race, and human reproduction itself. Published by Lolli Editions in the UK and New Directions in the US. Translated by Sophia Hersi Smith and Jennifer Russell.

[Alwynne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Olga Ravn’s novel’s grounded in her own life and the postpartum depression that descended after the birth of her first child. But equally it’s an exploration of interactions between the label “mother” and deep-rooted, cultural mythologies and practices: raising questions about what Ravn’s called the “area between what you are and what you are told.” Heavily influenced by Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook, Raven’s narrative unusually structured. Like Lessing’s it’s broken down into sections tackling themes from multiple angles, marked by disorientating time shifts – the only fixed point here is the moment of giving birth. Also, like Lessing, Ravn has more than one narrator, one who’s unnamed and her alter ego Anna – named after Lessing’s Anna Wulf. Anna’s a vehicle for expressing the unnamed narrator’s overwhelming sense of disintegration, the splitting off of parts of herself into discrete categories: writer, mother, wife, patient, woman. Ravn reflects these conflicting selves through a patchwork of genres from poetry to script to essay to journal to more conventional narrative, moving abruptly between forms – an experiment in representing experience that simultaneously highlights the near-impossibility of doing so.

Anna and the unnamed narrator – some version of Ravn herself – are in a relationship with a man, and give birth to a son. For both unnamed narrator and Anna, pregnancy reignites an earlier pattern of emotional and bodily discomfort, manifested through intense anxiety. These feelings become bound up with Anna’s thoughts about how she might be both rebelling against, and submitting to, the values of a society that’s preconditioned her for motherhood dating right back to her childhood doll play. A cultural emphasis on the primacy of motherhood as a form of creation clashes with Anna’s identity as a writer, an identity threatened by pressure to prioritise her child’s more immediate demands. Like Lessing’s Anna, Ravn’s Anna’s inner and outer worlds are cracking up –the outer world’s marked by violence, the rise of populists like Trump, and escalating climate change. When Anna and Aksel temporarily relocate from Denmark to Sweden, a new tension arises, leading to reflections on the self under capitalism, sparked by Stockholm’s wealthy residents whose identity is shaped by what they consume and projected through what they wear.

Interwoven with Anna and Ravn’s narrator’s experiences and observations is an alternative canon, tracing women’s experiences of motherhood back through authors from Mary Shelley to Unica Zurn to Margaret Attwood to Anne Boyer and Rachel Cusk. Women intent on connecting the personal/ individual with the collective and political. These goals are present in The Golden Notebook but Lessing’s net is wider, rooted in social and historical analysis informed by her particular brand of Marxism. I found Ravn’s political canvas harder to visualise, where Lessing’s producing vast, recognisable landscapes, Ravn’s often painting in hazy miniature.

I found Ravn’s book exceptionally absorbing, thought-provoking and often entertaining. Relationships between men and women here intrigued me, highlighted by the growing gulf between Anna and partner Aksel who competes with Anna for their child’s attention but feels free to step away whenever other pursuits beckon. Their setup's curiously dated in terms of housework and parenting styles. The persistence of certain, gendered expectations is central to the narrator’s and Anna’s concerns. Anna realises her exhausting, emotion work might be framed as essential but it's actually taken for granted, she searches for answers in theorists like Marx but finds he too is primarily invested in men. I thought it was interesting Ravn, and fictional Anna, ultimately take refuge in material associated with second-wave feminism: Lessing’s novel which was co-opted as a “feminist bible” and, for Anna, Susan Griffin’s 1978 essay on feminism and motherhood. I could see that Ravn’s partly using these references to resurrect concepts of domestic space as workplace and site of women’s unpaid labour. But I also found the links slightly disturbing, perhaps because they reminded me of broader issues surrounding recent "motherhood" fiction which, like much of second-wave feminism, has all too often privileged the experiences of white, middle-class, heterosexual women. Also even if unintentionally, this emphasis can appear to support troubling distinctions between the “conventionally-fertile, heterosexual mother” and those whose identity doesn’t fit that mould.

Thanks to Netgalley UK and publisher Book*hug Press

Rating: 3.5

[Paul Fulcher · Rating 4 out of 5]

Longlisted for the Republic of Consciousness Prize 2024, UK & Ireland

Is Anna's story the story of a woman's inner life?

And is the story of domestic life, of the child's first year, of housekeeping, a story driven by internal events? And therefore a narrative arc without any major dramatic climaxes?

If Anna's job is to bring children into the world, to keep the house clean, the food healthy and the heart warm, to care for and strengthen her body so that it is at the disposal of future foetuses, of children who want to be carried, babies who want to be breastfed and men who want to be loved — if this is Anna's work — is her writing about her body and home not precisely workplace literature?

My Work is the translation by Sophia Hersi Smith and Jennifer Russell of Olga Ravn's 2020 Mit arbejde, the author's 2nd novel in English after the International Booker, National Book Award and Ursula le Guin Prize featured The Employees, translated by Martin Aitken.

It is published by Lolli Editions:

Lolli Editions is an independent publisher based at Somerset House in London. We publish radical and formally innovative fiction that challenges existing ideas and breathes new life into the novel form. Our aim is to introduce to the Anglophone world some of the most exciting writers that speak to our shared culture in new and compelling ways, from Europe and beyond.

Antonio Lolli was an itinerant 18th-century composer who lived between Italy, Scandinavia, England, and Russia. Transcending traditional, national schools, Lolli worked from the ethic that artistic thought, and the means through which it can express itself, should be the basis of art, rather than following any predetermined rules.

And this is a novel that certainly does not follow the rules of the conventional 19th century style work which still seems to dominate 21st century fiction. As Ravn told the Guardian

In writing school I’d been taught that a great novel is a third-person psychological portrait of an individual who learns something and either perishes or is victorious. This novel is published every day; I tried to write one and it felt dead on the page. Reading Doris Lessing’s Golden Notebook at night when the baby slept changed everything. It was like a lifejacket. She’s struggling with linearity; one response to that could be fragmentation, but that’s a broken form, and she’s interested in something more holistic. She takes seriously how the experience of motherhood might influence a novel’s form.

As this comment suggests, this is a fragmentary, non-linear work, in a variety of styles (including journal entries; biographical snippets of female writers; play dialogue; prose poems) on the subject of birth, post-partum depression and early motherhood. The novel is told largely from the perspective of a character Anna (the name deliberately taken from Lessing's Anna Wulf as is the idea of different notebooks) who at times is the fictional projection of the author's experience and at other times in dialogue, and even conflict, with the author.

It makes for an absorbing and innovative read and one of those books where I could happily quote large chunks, but some favourite passages below.

Impressive and a strong International Booker contender.

Extracts

Part of a prose poem on the different experience of her partner (who, as she notes, in liberal Scandinavia: Suddenly, Anna understood that Aksel had imagined that they would both be mothers to the child. That Aksel had assumed he was going to be a mother. All this time he had competed with Anna to be the mother. In the absence of role models, he had rejected fatherhood and reached for motherhood instead.

while I pump
I think
about all the women
who came before me

when I
lift the child
hang the laundry
stand up at night
look outside

I think of the women
who did not get
the same amount of help

I think of the women
who had
the children to themselves
what joy

what horror

you say
you don’t think
about the men
who came before you

you say
that’s crazy
do you really think about that
about them
about all the women

and therein lies
the difference

it’s not just
our bodies
that are different

but also
our history

you have so little to lose
and I despise you for it
I mean
you have everything to gain
as a father

you don’t have to do much
to tower above

to do more
than the men before you

all the women
in me

their toil
throughout history

when you bend
over the child

you do not carry
this history

The failing of the giving "birth to my novel" metaphor - and, one of Anna's themes, that the experience of birth, while so normal, also seems so unique as the reality is seldom discussed:

Anna hated when people talked about their books as if they were children. That the conception had been difficult. That it was a life-changing experience to birth something into the world . That the book was the author’s baby . A book is not a human and an authorship not motherhood. You do not have a proprietary right to your child, you do not own it. It lives its own life, unknown to its parents. You can’t compare books to infants, Anna thought. It was gross. Anna could only assume that the comparison had been thought up by someone who didn’t have children, or who had at least never given birth to a child. Sometimes it felt as though Anna was practically the only person in the world who knew what it was like to give birth.

Another passage on 'normality' and uniqueness:

Anna thinks: What kind of book am I writing? A monstrous book for a monstrous feeling. A monstrous experience: giving birth.

Normal and yet extraordinary, common yet unique.

A passage inspired by an Itō Hiromi poem where, a mother herself, she imagines killing a child. From an interview with Hiromi, and the narrator's response:

‘The only time I’ve ever felt forced to explain myself was after I had written I wanted to kill my child. My message was: “Kill your children because you yourself are more important.” I had to write essays about how even though you hate your children, you might look the other way and embrace them, because at least they have sweet, small bodies. […] My problem is probably that I am too oriented towards literature, everything is fiction to me, everything can be written. But people aren’t good readers, they often stay up there on the surface.’

My problem is probably that I am too oriented towards literature, everything is fiction to me, everything can be written. But not for a mother. We demand of a mother that she does not write that way about her children, about her motherhood. For a mother, everything cannot be fiction.

One could say: A mother has no right to fiction. Or: To be a mother is to lose the right to fiction.

[Krista · Rating 4 out of 5]

When the child was born (or perhaps it happened stealthily during the pregnancy, like a brewing storm), life was divided into separate entities that had to fight among themselves for the right to exist. The child, the mother, the partner, the father, the woman, the family, the couple, the individual, the writing, the housekeeping, the work. It was unclear to me what my task was. I was charged with a duty of the utmost importance, but when I rolled up my sleeves and got to work, my hands plunged into an enormous shadow and I could no longer see them. How to live in such a divide? Cut off from oneself and from love. How to connect these murky worlds?

I hadn’t read Danish poet/novelist Olga Ravn before, but when the publisher’s blurb described My Work as “a radical, funny, and mercilessly honest novel about motherhood”, my interest was piqued. And having finished I can now report: This is definitely radical and honest, but as the (presumably autofictional) story of a writer suffering severe mental illness after the birth of her child — as an examination of the struggle to find the balance between writing and mothering, despite a partner who is also a writer and who fancies himself as a kind of mother to the child — there wasn’t much funny about this. Blending poetry, prose, diary entries, and countless references to the work of other mother-writers, this is a serious and literary work along the lines of Rachel Cusk and Doris Lessing, but there’s not a lot of laughs (and that’s not a criticism, just an observation for others who might be expecting something “funny”). A truly excellent and provocative novel and I look forward to reading Ravn again. (Note: I read an ARC through NetGalley and passages quoted may not be in their final forms.)

Date: 2 years and 5 months after the birth

This endless manuscript overwhelms me. It’s bringing me to my knees. I do not want it, this destruction. Take it away from me. I write from a brain-dead place. Without aim. Without connection. Without recognition. There’s madness here, and exposed flesh. This is why no one wants to read the books of mothers. No one wants to know her. To see her become real. But if we don’t look, we live stunted half-lives, each isolated in loneliness, shamefully pushing strollers down the boulevards and suburban streets, between the apartment blocks and through the cemeteries among the dead.

As My Work opens, the narrator (presumably Ravn) suggests that we pretend someone else — someone called “Anna” — wrote what follows in a series of notebooks and then gave them to the narrator to prepare them for publication. And as the notebooks were presented in no particular order, they jump around from her present to Anna’s pregnancy, to when her child is nearly four, and back and forth again. Throughout, Anna struggles with mental illness and seeks help from therapists, and although her partner does seem like an engaged, hands-on dad, his constant misreading of Anna’s needs sees him shooing her out of the house when she would like to be spending time with their son and passing the childcare off to her when she’d rather be writing. Throughout, the father is able to travel around Europe to attend the mounting of his plays, and as the only things that Anna can seem to write about are motherhood and her deteriorating mental state, she is riddled with self-doubt as to whether or not anyone wants to read about these things. The writing is masterful and there are lovely passages on nearly every other page. Here is Anna on attending group therapy:

I don’t know whether I’m lying when I tell them the truth about myself. Each time I tell a secret, it feels as though the secret is retrieved from a bucket inside me that’s filled with fiction. And as soon as the secret is spoken aloud, it hangs above the table between us like a mobile of mirrors and suddenly seems made up. Maybe I believe I can’t live without my secrets. Group therapy is just a theatre in which we play the role of the sick and others play the role of the observers.

And an example of the frequent poetic breaks:

what I hate
about maternity leave is not the child
not the housework not the lack of sleep

but the moment my husband
returns

and filled with
a whole day’s longing I go to him

so he will
take us
into his arms

the moment he sinks into the chair
exhausted

gone again but present
toil surrounds us

onesies
matte plastic bottles greasy pillows

rage destroys me

There are many overt references to women who were able to combine motherhood with a successful writing career throughout the ages — from Saint Birgitta in the 14th Century through Mary Shelley and Margaret Atwood — and in the Acknowledgements at the end, Ravn lists all of the women authors whose ideas and phrases were only alluded to in the text. My Work is a highly literary novel that places Ravn comfortably among the authors she evokes; even the formatting here is meant to recall The Golden Notebook by Lessing (and the fact that Lessing left her husband and children in order to concentrate on her writing suggests that giving herself over to childcare isn’t the only path for the narrator.)

Precisely because it’s fiction and not reality, there is no reason to classify the women as ill. All of us can become madwomen creeping along the walls when we read Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and when we read Itō Hiromi, we can all in our imaginations kill our infants together.

I loved everything about My Work — it is serious and compelling, totally relatable — just don’t come expecting the “funny”.

[Emmkay · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ravn began what became this novel by making notes on her phone after her child’s birth. There’s a doubling throughout - the “I” author and protagonist “Anna” sharing overlapping experiences of pregnancy, birth, motherhood. And a multiplicity that represents well the fragmentation that necessarily comes with trying to follow the compulsion to write while struggling with postpartum depression, anxiety, the lie of what motherhood should feel like, and a husband who on his face is modern and supportive but from whom Anna is increasingly alienated (at one point, while sipping his bag on the way out the door for a trip to put on a play, he says, “It’s not my fault your life is shitty.”). The structure of the novel is innovative - fragmented, with prose poems, excerpts from therapy, excerpts from public health pamphlets, passages that read like non-fiction about other women writers. It’s a very intertextual, literary work, engaging with Lessing’s The Golden Notebook (in form, theme, and the protagonist’s name, I gather, not having read it myself), Frankenstein, Susan Griffin, Rachel Cusk, and many Scandinavian writers.

My reading experience was mixed. My library copy is now despoiled by folded down corners - I was really engaged and excited by so many passages. I understand that in Denmark, when My Work came out, Ravn became a repository for many readers’ and other Danish women’s experiences, of postpartum depression and also birth trauma and the isolation of mothering, and that this has served as a lightning rod for movement for change. That’s wonderful. There are so many women with terrible birth experiences and nowhere to put the trauma and conflicted feelings that result, as they lurch into staggering up in the night with a new baby after barely having been stitched back together. I also really enjoyed the more non-fictiony parts later in the book, and in fact the whole last third. Prior to that, while finding individual passages excellent, I was finding it overlong and only intermittently engaging, but the project came together really well in that latter third. It’s part of a mostly white and middle class (ish - Anna works in an office and freelance, with money issues) recent literature of motherhood, which seems to focus and expand on many of the concerns of second wave feminism - but it’s not like any of those concerns are done with, rather they remain relevant. 3.5.

Why couldn’t she keep her thoughts collected, her book collected as a whole? Why did she always have to start over? Why did it always have to be something else? Shed its skin and take a new form? She didn’t feel fragmented, and she didn’t consider her writing to be so, it merely couldn’t be contained in the forms available to her.”

“If Anna’s job is to bring children into the world, to keep the house clean, the food healthy, and the heart warm, to care for and strengthen the body so it is at the disposal of future fetuses, of children who want to be carried, babies who want to be breastfed, and men who want to be loved - if this is Anna’s work, is her writing about her body and home not precisely workplace literature?”

“I stepped inside. I expected to find happiness. But the entire room was made of pain, built by it. Blood ran from my nipples, blood ran from my eyes, blood ran from the tears in my vagina and my rectum, blood ran from the internal wounds in my uterus, blood ran from the child, from his mouth, from his anus, and everything was blood and nothing was happiness. This heavy smell from inside my body. And the man stood there, outside the blood. I bled away. I disappeared. I named this disappearance Anna.”

[Robert · Rating 5 out of 5]

After reading My Work, something struck me.

Olga Ravn will give a unique take on common topics.

Over the last few years there have been a glut of books focusing on motherhood. I am not complaining but I did notice usually these novels tend to focus on one or two aspects of motherhood. I've always wondered if there will be an author who will dare mention everything from prenatal classes to overcoming post partum and accepting the child.

My Work is that all encompassing novel about motherhood. Not only does she mention Prenatal classes and post partum depression but there's also the changes in her body, how her partner is affected, the actual birth and how the mother is adapting to a child (breast feeding, crying at night) but also to try accept that her partner can look after the baby (spoiler, this does not work out well).

This makes My Work stand out but what makes this a truly unique book is the amount of different writing techniques are in here. There are poems, letters, a script, and a set of autofiction essays that are not dissimilar to something W.G. Sebald or Luis Sagasti would write. Not only that but My Work is a meta novel. Definitely a singular book,

What we get out of My Work is the inner workings of of a woman's mind before , during and after the birth - the book in fact spans the first two years of the child's life so there's descriptions of the bond between toddler and mother. Some bits are humorous, the prenatal classes and acupuncture sections are just brilliant and some moments are plain beautiful, the poems and some sections are educational. At the same time we also see the restrictions mothers experience, especially when it comes to finding work and as this is a novel about writing a novel, there are the struggles of being a mother and maintaining a writing career in the process.

My Work is a dazzling book. It yields many surprises and will resonate emotionally with the reader. It is a reading experience like no other. I thought that Olga Ravn changed the concept of an office novel with The Employees but now she has done it again. Whereas the other motherhood books are cave people, My Work is the monolith towering over them.

Many thanks to Lolli Editions for providing a review copy of my Work

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think this has to be my favourite book of the year. It impressed me as much as Claire Kilroy’s Soldier Sailor when it comes to the subject matter, but My Work was so interesting and brilliant when it came to form and style as well.
I absolutely agree with Kate Zambreno who sums up the excellence of this book perfectly at the back cover:
“This novel from Olga Ravn, this new golden notebook, needs to be read by absolutely anyone who has known the quiet madness and claustrophobic happiness of the interior, especially mothers who also long for a life of literature. But this novel absolutely needs to be read by everyone else as well. Oh Olga Ravn, always inventing new forms, you are a genius, how do you do it?”

[Ratko · Rating 3 out of 5]

Мајчинство није лак "посао" и са собом, осим среће због потомства носи и велики број других, не увек пријатних емоција.

Млада жена после првог порођаја, врло је рањива, често несхваћена, али увек под притиском околине и друштва да савршено испуни свој нови задатак - бригу о новорођеном детету. Ако постоји и најмања пукотина у том "савршенству", друштвене осуде су ту, врло гласне и нимало осетљиве.

Олга Равн управо пише о томе. Она (односно њен алтер его) је млада мајка пред порођајем, пуна зебње и страхова, који се само још више појачавају после порођаја и у првим месецима новог живота. Нова ситуација са огромним обавезама, егзистенцијална необезбеђеност, (не)разумевање партнера, притисци околине, све то урушава њено психичко здравље.

Иако је тема важна, ово ми је ипак превише набацано. Делује ми као да је списатељица одлучила да скупи све концепте и идеје које је имала о овој теми (писма, песме, дневничке забелешке) и да их повеже у једну књигу. Структура је лабава и нехронолошка, па се склапа мозаик, али ми је ипак недовршено све.

[Caroline Stadsbjerg · Rating 4 out of 5]

På en gang et stort rod af genrer, tid, personer, men samtidig føltes alt flydende. Den var fin, gjorde ondt, var både tilgængelig og poetisk, som en smertefuld strøm af åbenbaring, tvivl, manglende forståelse, faktisk oplevelse. Meget meta flere gange, og det var næsten det, jeg nød mest. Jeg'ets relation til tredjepersonen Anna, som også er jeget selv, var meget kærligt, trods det fælles traume de bar, det gjorde mig varm.

[Rachel Louise Atkin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I adored the writing style in this novel and the way in which it was told. My Work is a book about pregnancy and motherhood but it has such a sharp and dark edge to it. The majority of the books feels overwhelmingly sad as we read about ‘Anna’, the author of the book, who is doing her best to write but can only think of the pregnancy, her potential failure of being a mother and the looming shadow of postpartum depression hanging over her.

The book is told in a variety of forms including poetry, diaries, prose, extracts from minutes, doctor’s notes and play-like conversations. For me the book held such pain inside it - there doesn’t seem to be anything Ravn is trying to say other than that the process of becoming a mother is really fucking shit, and you feel this in every single line of the book. There is a scene which describes her giving birth but it is done through nurse’s notes and so the whole ordeal becomes horrifyingly clinical. Anna writes about how she is constantly disturbed by the thought of never bonding with her child and seeks professional help for OCD, depression and personality disorders because of her inability to calm down.

One long part of the book I really enjoyed was when she writes about infanticide in literature and how surrounding herself with it seems to quell some part of her that always thinks she never wanted to be a mother. It is such a deeply dark part of the book but I loved how raw the entirety of it felt.

I never usually love books that focus so much on pregnancy and motherhood but the way the topic was handled in My Work was so unique. Ravn completely upends how we traditionally view the role of motherhood and instead presents it as what it is: work. The whole experience, including the writing, has been work, and the title sums up Ravn’s deadpan and clinical yet thought-provoking intentions perfectly.

[Sofia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ravn's mixed media wandering through the mind of a mother in various points in her early motherhood journey.

The wanderings go back and forth and go round and round like the thoughts in her protagonists head. It's like thoughts spiralling all over each other. She creates this disjointedness the mother feels. A mother who never names her child, it is always the child, the boy. Is this her way of keeping him separate from her life?

Ravn touches on how when a woman becomes a mother, she metamorphises into something different than before. Her body changes to build the child, to birth the child, to feed the child, to accommodate the child. Her life changes as well, taking care of the child is the priority, what remains is thinly spread out to cover her health, her finances, her personal life and needs, her loves, her work, her art, her individuality. She no longer remains a woman but becomes a mother, and this causes conflict both internal and external. Finding a balance here is what each woman/mother tries for with varying degrees of success.

I felt that the book could have been tighter. Ravn's is so good in making us see Anna's perspective, but once we see it, we go for a repeat journey and another repeat journey, etc, and I did not enjoy that. I much prefer her The Employees.

An ARC kindly provided by author/publisher via Netgalley.

[Ruben · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Who wrote this book? I did, of course. Although I’d like to convince you otherwise. Let’s agree right now that someone else has written it. Another woman, entirely unlike me. Let’s call her Anna."

And so we dive into the chaotic jumble of pages that 'Anna' has left behind, written over the course of three years - from her pregnancy to the birth of her son and his first 2,5 years. Anna suffers from anxiety and the life changes motherhood brings are extremely difficult for her to cope with. The practical choices alone (which diapers, which creams, which foods, which clothes) are overwhelming, let alone the bigger questions. What is my role? What remains of my self? How can I maintain a working and writing life? Can I be a good mother and long to work at the same time? Is my relationship made for this change?

Husband Aksel acts as if he is modern and supportive, but is stuck in preconceptions.

I found some of the doubts are very relatable, others much less so. But no matter how much it resonates, the book is an impressive achievement. It is a non linear collage of different forms and styles (poetry, letters, notes, anecdotes), but in very accessible and vivid style.

Highly recommended for everyone, but especially for parents of young children.

[Anemone · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jeg læste bogen ret obsessed over to dage og måske også lidt forudindtaget: Jeg har fulgt med i hypen omkring bogen og generelt hypen om Olga Ravn, som jeg synes er meget, meget klog at høre på. Jeg har også selv lige læst og været meget optaget af Frankenstein, som en del af bogens mere essayistiske dele handler om.

Og set i lyset af det vil jeg gerne sige, at jeg elskede det hele. Den er måske lidt et skrummel med alle dens forskellige genrer og tidslinjer, men det føles alligevel samlet og nærmest befriende ikke konstant at befinde sig i én modus. Elskede de pertentlige beskrivelser af husarbejdet, optagelsen af tekstilerne, i kontrast til al ængsteligheden, i kontrast til de kølige journaler.

Mine egne erfaringer med reproduktivt arbejde begrænser sig til angsten for ikke at kunne blive gravid, hvis jeg en dag skulle ønske at blive det. Og angsten for potentielt i den situation at give alt det sære, jeg bærer med mig, videre til et andet menneske. Netop dén angst taler bogen ind i, og selvom det er utrolig befriende at læse, var det også ret triggering for mig.

Alt i alt føles det som en meget vigtig bog, som virkelig har sin berettigelse i verden – uden at jeg tænker, man skal læse den som en universel fremstilling af noget som helst.

[Literatursprechstunde · Rating 5 out of 5]

Olga Ravn schreibt in ihrem neuen Buch „Meine Arbeit“, welches 2024 im März Verlag erschienen ist, über die Geburt ihres ersten Kindes. Die dänische Autorin studierte Literarisches Schreiben in Kopenhagen an der dortigen Autorenschule. Neben der Veröffentlichung diverser und mit vielen Preisen ausgezeichneter Lyrikbände arbeitete sie als Literaturkritikerin, Lektorin und Übersetzerin. 2020 wurde sie für „Meine Arbeit“ mit dem renommierten Politiken-Literaturpreis ausgezeichnet.

„Meine Arbeit“ ist ein Buch über die tiefen Abgründe des Mutterseins, über gesellschaftliche Rollenbilder und das Verhältnis zwischen Mutterschaft und dem Schriftstellerinnen-Dasein. Ein Buch, das Neues schafft, indem es Formen aufsprengt.
Literarisch und intellektuell ist der Text voller neuer Formen und Gedanken. Ravn bleibt nicht dabei stehen, andere als etablierte Wahrheiten des Mutterseins und des Schreibens zu finden, auch die Form ist entsprechend neu und radikal, sie erfüllt und bricht mit Konventionen. „Meine Arbeit“ ist zugleich Fiktion, Autofiktion, Prosa, Lyrik und Essay.
Ganze dreizehn Anfänge zählt dieses Buch. Dies scheint zunächst passend, dreht sich doch alles um den Anbeginn eines Lebens, die Geburt eines Kindes. Sie sammelt die Erfahrung als Schreibende, wie solch ein Ereignis den Alltag durcheinander wirbelt. Zugleich sieht sich selbst aber vor einem Abgrund, einem Nichts, weil ihr das Gefühl für Sprache und Zeit abhanden gekommen zu sein scheint. Die vielen Anlaufversuche begründen sich in ihrem Willen, das Schreiben als Ort der Befreiung für sich zurückgewinnen zu wollen. Sie erlebt es als Überlebensmittel.Im Durcharbeiten jener Lebensphase ver-
sucht sie das Schreiben als Ort der Befreiung zurückzugewinnen und erfährt es als Überlebensmittel.

Mutterschaft und Geburt gehören mitunter zu den wichtigsten Themen der Gegenwartsliteratur. Olga Ravns Werk ist eines der radikalsten und ästhetisch anspruchsvollsten Bücher zu Mutterschaft.
Sie erlebt die sich anschließenden Tage der Geburt im Krankenhaus nicht als glückliche Mutter, die alle Schmerzen vergisst, sobald sie ihr Neugeborenes in den Armen wiegt, sondern beschreibt sich selbst als „tot und begraben“. Noch Jahre später denkt sie voller Grauen an die „Krankheit Mutterschaft“.
Gleichzeitig hat sie während dieser ersten Lebensmonate ihres Kindes fast manisch geschrieben. Ihre Aufzeichnungen reichen von eingetippten Gedanken im Handy, Notizen und Skizzen auf losen Blättern, E-Mails, bis zu einem ganzen Schwangerschaftstagebuch. Jedoch fehlen ihr dazu die Erinnerungen, sie sind wie ausgelöscht. Als sie Jahre später wieder schwanger ist, beginnt sie diese zu ordnen und hat das Gefühl, sich von der psychischen Krise ihrer ersten Geburt befreien zu können. Weil ihr das zu ordnende Material so fremd vorkommt, denkt sie sich die fiktive Figur der Anna aus, der sie die Erlebnisse zuschreibt.
In verschiedenen Erzählsträngen schildert sie die Abgründe ihrer Erzählerin, von der Angst, in den Wahnsinn abzudriften, den kleinen Sohn nicht lieben zu können, von der Scham und Entfremdung ihrem Partner gegenüber, bis zu dem Gedanken ihr Leben zu beenden.

Olga Ravn arbeitet mit diversen Genres und Sprachstilen. Sie versucht von bekannten Formen abzuweichen. Man kann es als fast künstlerisch bezeichnen, wie sie Erzähltes, Arztprotokolle, Gedichte, Theaterdialoge, Zitate oder Reflexionen über das Schreiben zusammenführt und gleichzeitig die Chronologie aufsprengt.
Die vermeintlichen Gegensätze Wirklichkeit und Fiktion, Erzählung und Analyse, Schreiben und Leben verschmelzen so, dass ein neuartiges Drittes entsteht.

Zudem gelingt es Olga Ravn, die persönliche Geschichte ihrer Figur mit der gesell-
schaftlichen Verortung kurzzuschließen. Die Erzählung von der glücklichen Mutter wird als Fiktion entlarvt, anhand derer sie ein konkretes Familienbild und Frauenrolle vermitteln wollte.
Sie stellt ökonomische Zusammenhänge her, indem sie Mutterschaft, Geburt und das Schreiben als harte Arbeit darstellt.
Es ist ein Roman über die Vereinbarkeit von Mutterschaft und Künster*innenschaft bzw. die Veränderungen in der Partnerschaft, die ein Kind für Frauen mitbringen. Ein wichtiges Buch, doch ich wünschte mir, wir wären als Gesellschaft schon weiter.

[Jolanta (knygupė) · Rating 4 out of 5]

4,5*

“Anna thinks: What kind of book am I writing? A monstrous book for a monstrous feeling. A monstrous experience: giving birth.”

Motinystė - sunkus ir pavojingas darbas. Anot Olgos Ravn - ypač kuriančiai moteriai.

Proza sumiksuota su poezija, esė, Žemės kalendoriaus citatom, knygų ir jų autorių nagrinėjimų (Charlotte Perkins Gilman “The Yellow Wallpaper”, Ito Hiromi “Killing Kanoko”, Mary Shelley “Frankenstein”) ir dar kažkuo sunkiai įvardijamu. Šis autobiografinis eksperimentiniu stiliumi parašytas romanas man labiausiai surezonavo savo puikiai pristatyta nėštumo ir pogimdyvinės depresijos tema.

"When a mother gives birth to her child, something radical happens to her. The child who was once part of her body isn't anymore, but remains part of her consciousness. When she is with the child, she is not herself, but something else. She feels a restless longing to return to herself, to remove herself from the child. But when she is without the child, it’s as though parts of her are missing. She is not herself. She is neither herself nor not herself. From this position, she will struggle.”

[…]”To give birth to a child is also to give birth to a future corpse, you make a death, have you ever thought about that?”

“Must she kill the writer inside to become a good mother?”

“When the child left my body, the whole world transformed, not a single living thing could be understood in the same way again. Among the world’s objects was now my child, my own literal flesh, looking back at me. My connection to the world changed radically. Every single thing in the world revealed another, deeper side, because part of my body had left me and now existed among them. I was no longer the same. The divide between what is me and what is the world opened. Everything casts the same light as before, but now I see that it’s living.”

“I know there are women whose experience of the child leaving their body is very different from mine.
Women who may very well have experienced this fabled happiness during childbirth.
To these mothers I want to say: you belong here too.
No two hearts are alike.
Forgive me, I’m not trying to take your happiness away from you. I am trying to give happiness to myself. I found no happiness in the room where I was told to seek it. There was only a pile of ash in the middle of the room. And the ash dried out my mouth. And each child comes into the world as themselves, through their own channel. And I became, I was, sheer channel, nothing but a channel of flesh for the child. And all my walls screamed with pain when he was born. And what was I then, after his arrival, but a used channel? A husk, a slough, discarded by a baby. The eyes moved away from me, they turned to the child. They took him into their arms. I’m still lying on the delivery table. I can’t get out. Many years have gone by since then, but no one has noticed that the night they welcomed the child, I died, and what now walks around among them is not a human, but the discarded channel for the child’s arrival.”

*
“to become your mother
not by adapting to your rhythm
but surrendering to your breath”

Rekomenduoju perskaityt vyrams.

[Vartika · Rating 3 out of 5]

I can't say I enjoyed reading Olga Ravn's book, but that is likely the point of it. Inspired by Doris Lessing's The Golden Notebook , My Work has two fictional narrators: an unnamed writer, and Lessing's heroine Anna Wulf, whose notebooks the former is attempting to turn into the book we're reading. The book we're reading is, in fact, the unnamed first narrator's own account of motherhood and post-partum depression couched in the double fiction of Anna, who both is and is not her; a book with several beginnings, several middles, and several ends, with the only fixity being the moment of giving birth.

My Work examines writing, motherhood, and the cultural scripts for being a woman through what most closely resembles the lens of second wave feminism, but which dips in and out of more contemporary feminist discourses as well:

"One could say: A mother has no right to fiction. Or: To be a mother is to lose the right to fiction."

What was most interesting to me about this book was its exploration of how writing changed after motherhood – how everything changes, really, because

"Motherhood is designed for a woman who no longer exists."

Here, Ravn picks apart at the cliché of writing-as-giving-birth even as she indulges it through her character, challenging what we are told about the 'work' of mothers, and what it actually is. Naturally, she also examines gender roles and the route to motherhood:

"She dressed and undressed the child with a confidence that reassured them both. She didn’t think it was innate, but indoctrinated since childhood.

"Throughout the years, thousands of dolls had been dressed and undressed in Anna’s hands, and now, in the maternity ward, Anna felt as though all this doll play had existed solely to prepare her for this moment, for this child."

the narrators' having to reassure the father of her child is another form of 'work', one that divulges to her the reality of how equal the two of them really are. The father thinks he is capable of mothering the child and seems to actively compete with Anna about it, but he is also capable of conveniently stepping away whenever his career calls on him. Anna is a writer, yet she cannot go away to write – only one of them have the luxury of picking their priorities.

"If a man tells you that you're worrying too much, ask him to do the worrying for you"

As much depth as it does succeed in going into, My Work has some of the same pitfalls as all the other most prominent literary explorations of motherhood: it tries to understand motherhood within very narrow bounds, through the lives of white, middle-class, heterosexual and fertile women. It is certainly a lot more innovative in form than in its approach to feminism, decidedly a few decades behind where theory lies today. The shifting forms here – letters, diaries, prose, play scripts and poems – give this book its pull, its currency. I did not like the poems, but this could be because of the difference in the breadth of vocabulary between Danish and English. Even so, this translation by Jennifer Russell and Sophia Hersi Smith is exquisite, and the image of "meat juice" leaking out of the narrator's body will stay with me forever – a most effective contraceptive by all means.

This is, in its own words,

"A dirty book, a misshapen book, a book cut wrong. A book that can’t keep thought clean, time clean. A book written in the child’s time. A chopped-up, stuttering book. A book with bottomless holes to fall into, like never-ending breastfeedings. A book full of doubt. A book struggling with achievement. Not a book that is an achievement. But a book that came of pleasure and horror. A book that either illuminates or erases its tracks? Not a book about the right thing to do, to think, to be, but a book that creates space for pain and from this space engenders a possible future happiness."

[od1_40reads · Rating 4 out of 5]

Olga Ravn has released this beautifully designed new novel, a follow-up to her acclaimed novella ‘The Employees’. It is an exploration into motherhood, using personal experiences, portrayal in literature, and society’s standards and expectations.

It’s also a book I think men should absolutely read. Especially young/new fathers or fathers soon to be. Even as a gay man, it was shockingly enlightening.

Not only does Ravn give a “mercilessly honest” account of pregnancy, birth and most importantly the early years of raising a child; but she also, with shattering insight, talks about the vast disconnect between the main character, Anna, her experiences and that of her male partner.

The book explores in fundamental detail not only Anna’s physical health, but perhaps more importantly her mental health, as she experiences the aspects of motherhood which self-help books and well-meaning friends and family do not tell you. In parts it almost reads as a psychological thriller/horror that King/Kubrick would’ve been proud of.

It’s a clever and intelligent book, using various literary forms – fiction, essay, poetry, memoir and letters. It’s radical, dark, and yet also often funny.

There were a couple of things that bugged me a little, like the overuse of capitalisation (which to me is often unnecessary, and sometimes juvenile). But really that’s a trifling point, and certainly not one to judge an entire book or author’s work by.

[nathan · Rating 3 out of 5]

A difficult book to review because motherhood itself is difficult.

Ravn takes down the literal meaning of "my body of work." She's looking not at her own writing but her own body. The work the body produces as a mother,

bearing,

birthing, and

burdening.

Through confession, diary entries, play, and poetry, Ravn channels the struggles of motherhood through an entity, Anna, whose clockwork winds and cranks in autofiction. What feels like a very real account feels distant in the many mediums Ravn experiments with. All the gears are in order, but I'm not sure if they're working. I'm not sure if the gears even need to be there. But what you're getting is Ravn's entire body. You're getting all the pain, the sorrow, the anger, and even the mania.

So often, postpartum, we will label the woman as crazy. And here, Ravn also uses literary critique to examine the works of other female writers trapped in the dichotomy of needing to sacrifice one or the other, the writing or the child. Ravn breaks free of this, attempts to, in this frustrating read that perhaps encapsulates the dizzying aches the female body goes through when it comes to being a mother.

For Ravn, or for Anna, this is her being. Many forms. Many voices. Many rooms. Many songs. Loud and quiet. Not heard at all. Heard by some. And will you hear her out?

[Troy]

my work by ogla ravn was a dark walk through the beginnings of motherhood and an excavation of the writer’s journey. I could not help but draw similarities to the work of sylvia plath because ravn is able to so brilliantly convey the isolating and interior life of depression, and in this case post-partum. for me, this book was a fever dream of what it is like to carry around anxiety and depression and how it can debilitate us and shape our lives. it was a dark reading experience, but an important one for me.

the experimental prose weaves us back and forth through a period of years with journal entries, letters, poetry, clinical reports, group therapy transcripts, among many other forms of writing to form a symphony of the many ways writing and literature can lead us to some sort of deeper understanding of our own suffering or need for freedom, whatever freedom may mean for any one familiar with the trappings of a tortured or troubled mind.

[Päivi Metsäniemi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fantastinen ja vahvasti omaääninen kirja äidiksi tulemisesta. Se pakenee genrerajoja, sekoittaen proosaa ja runoutta, fiktiota ja autofiktiota, esseetä ja kirjeitä, vaikka mitä. Jos mitään ymmärrän naiskirjoittamisesta, tämä on sitä vahvimmillaan: rivien välistä voi tuntea Cixous’n, Woolfin, Durasin, Nelsonin ja muut edelläkävijät.

Asetelma on tuttu; kirjailija saa lapsen, ja se ahdistaa, masentaa, asettaa itsen uuteen valoon, suhde kirjoittamiseen ja puolisoon pitää määritellä uudestaan. Mutta Olga Ravn on äärimmäisen taitava siinä, mitä tekee. Rakenteen fragmentaarisuus toistaa elämänvaiheen sekavuutta, mahdottomuutta säilyttää jatkuva minäkäsitys. Ravn rakentaa Annan, joka saa lapsen, vaikka tuntuu ilmiselvältä, että Anna on Olga, mutta jokin etäisyys tarvitaan, ettei kaikesta tule liian vaikeaa.

Omaan äitiyteeni ei liity oikeastaan mitään näistä ahdistuksista ja masennuksista ja minuuden uudelleenmäärittelyistä, mutta ei vaadi juuri minkäänlaista mielikuvitusta tai empatiaa ymmärtääkseen, että näinkin voi olla, kun kuvaaminen on näin taitavaa. Yhtenä mielenkiintoisena lisämausteena on ruotsalaisuus/tanskalaisuus, jotka näyttävät helsinkiläis-lähiöläisestä eksoottiselta ylellisyyselämältä, mutta joista kirjailija löytää kiinnostavia eroja.

[Kirstine · Rating 2 out of 5]

Jeg føler, dette er en "det er ikke dig, det er mig" situation, men har godt nok sjældent kedet mig så bravt.

Jeg har meget respekt for det ærlige portræt af moderskabet i al dets kaos og vold og kærlighed, det er vigtigt. Men tror denne bog er bedre, hvis man selv er forælder.

Og så skulle jeg ikke have hørt den som lydbog - en lydbog, som er under 7 timer, men som det tog mig flere uger at komme igennem. Min hjerne gav op efter kort tid hver gang.

Der er en poesi i det almindelige, i hverdagen, i vasketøj og madlavning, og i at få dette minuts praktikaliteter til at gå op med det næste minuts, men Ravn fangede det ikke for mig. Det føltes mest af alt trivielt, som om det essentielle og det vigtige druknede i endeløse beskrivelser uden formål. Samtidigt har jeg det også som om, jeg ikke kunne give denne bog det fokus, den måske har fortjent.

Den havde sine øjeblikke. Der var bare ikke nok af dem.

[Henriette Terkelsen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hvordan anmelder jeg en bog, som på en gang flår mig i stykker og heler mig? Som får mig til at føle mig som en del af et fællesskab og helt alene? Som spejler mine oplevelser af det at være kvinde, være menneske, være mig, og som samtidig er så langt fra min erfaringsverden? Det her er muligvis den vigtigste bog, jeg nogensinde har læst.

[Ida · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ok, den var vild. Forstår Ravn-hypen.

[ريم الصالح · Rating 5 out of 5]

المراجعة العربية في الأسفل 👇🏻

I can't get over this book! Even now! Long after finishing it. I still find myself thinking about the details and the pain Ravn so beautifully and painfully explores. It’s a raw, intense experience that pulls you into each moment, making you feel every emotion. Ravn delves into the struggles of motherhood; the fleeting joys, the endless sacrifices. Her writing is so deep and sensitive that it feels like you’re part of the story, a witness to the pain, living with the characters, understanding them, and hoping for a change, no matter how small.

This book raises profound questions about the true meaning of motherhood, the dark sides we tend to ignore, and the love that doesn’t always fade, even when we lose hope in finding security.

Even after finishing it, the words stay with you, taking you into a world filled with harsh reality and a deep sense of exhaustion and disappointment that’s hard to move past. It’s an incredible book! I loved it, became attached to it, and I still feel it in my soul. This writing stays with you, creating tenderness, empathy, and is able to shift your perspective on life, relationships, and the unspoken words that linger.

المراجعة العربية:

لا أستطيع تجاوز هذا الكتاب حتى الآن، حتى بعد مضي وقت ليس بالقصير، لازلت أفكر بكل تلك التفاصيل والآلام التي تحدثت عنها رافن. إنه تجربة حية وحارقة تجعلك تعيش كل لحظة عارية بكل مشاعرها. تتحدث رافن عن معاناة الأم بما تحمله من صراعات، من الفرح الذي لا يدوم إلى التضحيات التي لا ��نتهي. أسلوبها العميق والمفرط في حساسيته جعلني أشعر وكأنني جزء مما يحدث، وكأنني أحد الشهود على كل هذا الألم، أعيش مع الشخصيات وأفهمها وأتعاطف معها وأتعلّق بأمل أن يتغير شيء للأفضل.

الكتاب يثير في القارئ تساؤلات جوهرية عن معنى الأمومة، وعن الجوانب المظلمة التي نميل لتجاهلها، وعن الحب الذي لا يضيع أحياناً لكننا نفقد فيه الأمل بالأمان.

حتى بعد الانتهاء من هذا الكتاب، تبقى كلماته تلاحقك، تأخذك إلى عالم مليء بالواقعية الجارحة والشعور العميق بالخيبة والتعب الذي لا يمكنك تخطيه بسهولة. كتاب عظيم! أحببته وتعلّقت به، بل وأحس به في روحي! هذه الكتابة قادرة على أن تستقر في قلبك ورأسك، قادرة على خلق الرقة والتعاطف، وتغيير نظرتك للحياة والعلاقات، وحتى للكلمات التي بقيت في الصمت.

[Korcan Derinsu · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5/5

My Work, hamilelik ve annelik sürecini ele alan bir roman. Bedenin, ruhun, ilişkilerin nasıl da değiştiğini; kadınların hayatının adeta öncesi/sonrası diye nasıl da ikiye ayrıldığını ve bu süreçte partnerleri yanlarında olsa bile aslında ne kadar yalnız olduklarını anlatıyor. Olga Ravn şiir, düzyazı, senaryo vs. gibi farklı türleri de anlatıya dahil ederek karakterinin karanlık ruh haline okuyucuyu da dahil ediyor. Kronolojinin de düz olmaması karakterin kendi içinde yaşadığı değişime tanık olma adına yardımcı oluyor. Çocuğu olmayan bir erkek olarak anneliğin ne denli zor bir şey olduğuna bir kez daha ikna oldum. Kadın olsam eminim çok daha fazla etkilenirdim. Hatta anne olmak istiyorsam kararımı bir kez daha gözden geçirirdim. Buna rağmen bu çok iyi olabilecek kitabın bitmek tükenmek bilmeyen tekrarlar yüzünden cazibesini bir noktadan sonra kaybettiğini de düşünüyorum. Yazarın bu tekrarlarla neyi amaçladığının da farkındayım ama yine de daha konsantre bir anlatımla ortaya daha güçlü bir eser çıkabileceğine inanıyorum. Yazardan okuduğum diğer kitapla kıyaslamam gerekirse Personel’i daha başarılı buluyorum.

[mindy · Rating 5 out of 5]

One one level, My Work articulates the silenced subjectivities of motherhood with humour, horror, and despair. On another level, My Work is a miraculous artefact of the author’s survival. Every page vibrates with the desperate belief that suffering can become meaningful, and maybe even be transcended, through writing.

A really important book. Hugely courageous and ambitious, and it delivers. My Work convinces that writing is a way to keep living, and that novels can be a sanctuary for those experiencing distress. It’s also amongst a rare seam of literature where instead of a disciplining constraint, form is a beautifully crafted carrier bag. Cannot recommend highly enough <3

[alexis · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book could single-handedly scare anyone out of having kids.

An extremely visceral, anxiety-inducing exploration of childbirth that, around 2/3rds of the way in, becomes a literary meditation on the societally conflicting roles of artist and mother. Definitely a pretty narrow portrait of the concept of motherhood, and I’m sure plenty of people will be unimpressed by the narrator’s postpartum hang-ups surrounding breastfeeding, but this felt very much in line with feminist works like Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own.

side note: I would not, contrary to the publisher’s description, really call this book “funny” lol

[Joy D · Rating 3 out of 5]

Set in Denmark and Sweden, 2015-2017, My Work is a novel about pregnancy, childbirth, and early motherhood. The conceit is that it is a work written by a woman named Anna, which is being assembled by the narrator (who may or may not actually be Anna). It follows Anna’s life through two pregnancies, her experience of post-partem depression, and the exhausting work of taking care of an infant.

Parts of it contain a daily pregnancy journal. There are lists and poems. It includes a detailed description of childbirth, almost down to the minute. The protagonist is a woman who has an anxiety disorder and frequently experiences catastrophic thoughts and panic attacks. At one point, she talks to a therapist, and the therapist gives her good advice, but she is reluctant to act on it. It details the never-ending work that motherhood entails, and how little it is appreciated. It covers changes in the relationship with her husband after her child is born.

The primary theme is the criticism that women have received over the years for writing during early motherhood, ostracism from others that think they are shirking their duties, and their own guilt that they may not be paying enough attention to the child. It is a fragmented reading experience, which is a type of structure that rarely appeals to me. It contains thirteen beginnings, twenty-eight “continuations,” and nine endings. My favorite part is the literary analysis and discussions of art in other works written by women, such as Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper and Itō Hiromi’s poem “Killing Kanoko.” I read this book on the strength of The Employees, which I prefer to this one. I liked the premise, but did not care as much for the execution.

[Adam Ferris · Rating 5 out of 5]

"By writing it down on these pages, I relieve us both of the burden, the child and me. Here I put all that is horrible about becoming a mother. Here I put the mystery, everything I don't understand. Here I put the loneliness, the distance to the child's father that came with this new life. So neither he nor the child, nor I, must carry it. This book will be a container, a vessel for what a mother is not allowed to be: torn, in doubt, distraught, unhappy."

What Olga Ravn has done with My Work is totally take the sugar coated force fed tale of motherhood, flipped it upside down, shook it like a snow globe and mixed it with motor oil. This is an extremely original piece of literature in form and content that is filled with equal parts beauty and brutality. Let's face it we have all had a mother, known a mother, or been a mother. Reading this book is for all of us as it develops empathy and a deeper truth of what the real world is like for women before, during and after birth. Olga Ravn also makes us expand our idea as to what a novel can be. Though stunning in its poetic genius, this book may be the best form of literary birth control ever.

"The first thing I did when I got home was to write down the scene. It had a surreal quality to it that I almost immediately recognized as literary. Was this impulse to turn into writing a means of protecting myself against this opening into madness, or rather a way of digesting the event and giving it space?"

The book takes its shape from the fragmented parts of Anna that form her veracity. She holds nothing back in any form the writing takes and these vulnerable portrayals about creating inside and outside the womb. Going deep down into the depths of her true being, she rummages around to find her essential nature. For a world that preaches many absolutes, finding ourselves and making sense of this world is barely stable even on the good days. The dualities and dimensions of our spirit and truth are always in flux and up for revision and there is a peace in this if we want it. Ravn's depth of insight and ability to maneuver superbly stunning turns of phrases make My Work modern proof of why it is beyond necessity to seek out writers, poets and artists.

"To give birth to a child is to give birth to a future corpse, you make death, have you ever thought about that?"

My Work is feverish and intelligently perceptive auto-fiction at its best. Delving into medical procedures, sexuality, love, friendship, mental illness, fact and fiction, life and death in gruesomely authentic detail, this book is not for the faint of heart. And if you are a woman, you are definitely not faint of heart. This book is an elaborate take on motherhood, womanhood, and wifedom that will greatly resonate with fans of Amina Cain, Danish author Tove Ditlevsen and French Nobel Laureate Annie Ernaux. I can't describe how unputdownable a book this was for me. Olga Ravn is fierce and unapologetic in her inventiveness and boldness, and I am always here for that kind of raw beauty.


"Breastfeeding releases
its black syringe
the black earth
it wishes me neither
ill nor well"

"Nothing reminds me more of writing than doing laundry. My thoughts come together in a similar way. I do it while the others are sleeping. It's a pleasant loneliness. I think of all the women who have stood here before me, carrying out these same movements. Each time I lift the clothes from the basket and up to the line, I feel these women throughout hundreds of years passing on their stories through me. Time flows through me. I feel their temperaments. This inner place to which work takes you, and where no one can follow. And I feel how, here, by the clothesline, I become invisible to the world but clear to myself."

"It is very difficult to put together a whole, wrote Anna, to figure out what wholeness is and what it looks like. What is a whole Anna? What is the sum of her parts? These parts of me, separate yet linked to connect them, to gather them in one place - that is my work."

"I carry fiction and its tropes
closer to me heart than facts."

"So much of this book has been about writing it. At no point did the form fall into place and write itself. The entire book had to be forced out. As though the book were a force that wanted to exist. And yet it is formless, and most of the time I have considered it a threat."

"I walk into the future with a fire at my heels."

"Are all these notes merely about writing?
Have I forgotten the pregnancy?
I carry it with me like a star waiting to shoot."

"Who wrote this book?
I did, of course.
Although I'd like to convince you otherwise."


"When Marx wrote that work should be outsourced to machines so the worker could instead write poetry in the morning, who did he imagine changed the diapers?"

"NO matter how much Anna tried, she kept writing strange texts that jumped all over. The writing in her wouldn't resign itself to Anna's plans. She couldn't see herself and had to grope in the dark."







"No one is required to exercise constant sound moral judgment the way a mother is."

"The question of whether the invented or the realistic comes closest to the truth gained importance when I realized that the story I had been fed about childbirth being the happiest moment of a mother's life was a lie. But it wasn't like that. It was an abyss. Since the child's arrival, I have fought this story. I want this story to admit that it's a lie, and then I want this story to bless me."

"The notion that one must sacrifice everything for the sake of art - that only in this way can it become sublime - implies that everyone who is forced to take care of others, to perform manual labour, cannot become an artist."










Review to come