The Unfamiliar: A Queer Motherhood Memoir

By (author) Kirsty Logan

An unconventional, unexpectedly funny, brutally honest memoir about infertility, pregnancy and motherhood

‘You and your partner want a baby. But your two bodies can’t make a baby together.’

If you want a baby but your body says otherwise –

If you don’t know the polite way to say thank you for the sperm –

If you’re waiting for the sound of a brand-new heartbeat –

If you know it takes a village to raise a baby but have no idea who should be doing what –

If you’re lurching between bliss and bewilderment –

If you don’t fit the shape of what you’ve been told a mother should be –

Reach for The Unfamiliar and don’t let go.

Moving and immersive, and written with wisdom, disarming humour and raw honesty, The Unfamiliar casts a fresh eye on motherhood and challenges our assumptions about pregnancy, gender roles, queer identity and what it means to be a parent.

Reviews of The Unfamiliar: A Queer Motherhood Memoir

Searingly honest. There is something inherently strange about nurturing a person inside your body and then giving birth to it … Logan does an excellent job of portraying the reality – the beauty and the horror of it — Lotte Jeffs * Guardian * When pregnancy grabs hold of a body it uses it to tell a very old story, but The Unfamiliar insists on a telling that is vibrantly new. The result is a book of desire, of bewilderment, of joy, of grief, and of love. Kirsty Logan writes with bright wit and wonder – I read this book in awe * Doireann Ní Ghríofa, author of A Ghost in the Throat * What a book this is, probing gender roles and expectation, identity and desire. Luminous writing captures the uncertainty, the fear, the sheer physicality of love. It is wonderful * Marianne Levy, author of Don't Forget to Scream * Cold, hard, raw writing that somehow sets your heart on fire. I could not put it down * Laura Dockrill, author of What Have I Done? * Such a fierce, honest, beautifully written account of love, and queer motherhood. I found it very moving. Logan manages to bring the tiniest detail in kaleidoscopic detail for the reader, but in such precise poetic prose. A marvel * Pragya Agarwal, author of (M)otherhood * I loved The Unfamiliar – a courageous and sharply written account of a meandering journey to motherhood and all the emotional and physical struggles it entails. Funny and intensely moving, with the most vivid description of birth I've ever read * Kate Maxwell, author of Hush *