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Motherhood by Sheila Heti  {Reviewed by THOMAS} Is flipping coins to determine answers to questions posed by the flipper of the coins a good way to guide your life? no Is flipping coins to determine answers to questions posed by the flipper of the coins a good way to write a book? no But isn’t this book, Motherhood, which has been written by flipping coins to determine the answers to questions posed by the flipper of the coins, in this case Sheila Heti, the author of the book, a good book? yes Is Motherhood a good book, then, because it was written by Sheila Heti rather than because it was written by flipping coins? yes When Sheila—the Sheila who is a character in the book, which the reader is permitted to assume is the same person (whatever that means) as Sheila Heti the author of the book— says, “I don’t think I have a heart—a heart I can consult. Instead, I have these coins,” is that a good way for either the character in the book or the author of the book to proceed? no Is flipping coins to determine the answers to questions posed by the flipper of the coins a good way to write a review of a book that has been written by flipping coins to determine the answers to questions posed by the author? no If I wrote a review in such a way, would I be able to do it without cheating, in other words, without only pretending that I had flipped coins when I had not actually flipped coins at all, or flipping the coins but then overriding the outcomes of those coins if they did not suit me? no Would it be better if I didn’t waste time looking for coins to flip, then? yes And Sheila Heti, can I be sure that she didn’t cheat when writing a book by flipping coins to determine the answers to questions she posed? no Does this matter? no In fact, might this not be a good way to compose a novel or somesuch, or find a way out of writer’s block, whatever that is, or determine a way out of any predicament, at least any fictional predicament, given that predicaments usually arise from the presence of binaries—either A or not-A, for example—and so seem to clamour for a resolution that can be expressed in a binary way? yes Just as writing conversation can be a good way to find a way out of writer’s block, whatever that is, even writer’s block visited upon the writing of a book review? yes Even if one side of the conversation says only either yes or no? yes Are the results I might achieve this way satisfactory? no Would the results be satisfactory with a different approach? no Is any of this useful in so-called real life? no But doesn’t Sheila Heti apply this approach to the real-life question—if we accept that the Sheila of the book corresponds to the real-life Sheila, the book’s author—of whether or not she wants to or should have a child, or become a mother, which may or may not imply having a child, depending on how subtly the concept of motherhood is understood or defined? yes So this approach is not useful? no You mean it is useful? yes Can you explain that? no Can Sheila Heti explain that? yes Does she do so in this passage, when she consults her coins?    “Is any of the above true?    no    Is there any use in any of this, if none of it is true?    no    Even if you said yes, it wouldn’t matter. You don’t mean anything to me. You don’t know the future, and you don’t know anything about my life, or what I should be doing. You are complete randomness, without meaning. [However] you have shown me some good things, but that is just me picking up the good in all the nothing you have shown me.” yes As Sheila approaches forty she suffers from ambivalence about whether or not to have a child before it is ‘too late’. She can’t seem to disentangle what might be the expectations of her by others because she is a woman from what might be her biological inclinations as a woman, not that this concept necessarily has any validity, and from her own personal expectations and inclinations. Is it even possible to disentangle these things? no Would it be true to say that the more you think about things in these terms the less sense these terms make? yes Is there any point in thinking about things in these terms? no Unless, perhaps, it is useful to get to the point at which these terms make no sense? yes Does Sheila obsess over the question of whether or not to have a child as a way of relieving herself of the question of whether or not to have a child? yes A way of avoiding having a child, even? yes Saying yes to having a child would remove the uncertainty of whether or not to have a child and the uncertainty could not be regained, at least not in that form, but saying no merely provides the opportunity for the uncertainty to resurge at the next possible moment for it to be considered. Prevarication is, therefore, such a tiring prophylactic. Is the book to some extent somehow about the deep problems of decision-making, in whatever sphere of life, about whether we can disentangle the force of what we might call ‘will’ from the force of what we might, for want of a better word, call ‘fate’ (‘determinism’ is probably a better word)? yes When Sheila says, “Sometimes I am convinced that a child will add depth to all things—just bring a background of depth and meaning to whatever it is I do. I also think I might have brain cancer. There’s something I can feel in my brain, like a finger pressing down,” is her problem really about depth and meaning rather than about having a child? yes Sheila says, “This will be a book to prevent future tears.” Is this book, Motherhood, perhaps more about depression—Sheila’s, her mother’s, perhaps the reader’s—than it is about motherhood per se? no Sheila says, “I am a blight on my own life.” She says, “Nothing harms the earth more than another person—and nothing harms a person more than being born.” She says, thinking of her decision to be a writer and all the time she has consequently spent arranging commas, “When I was younger, writing felt like more than enough, but now I feel like a drug addict, like I’m missing out on life.” Is there a sense in which writing and ‘living’ are incompatible modes of existence? yes When Sheila states that resisting urges has previously led her to more interesting places, is it useful for her to think about resisting the urge to have a child—wherever that urge originates—as a way of bringing depth and meaning to her life? yes Does she in fact find more depth and meaning by resisting the urge to have a child? yes Does this depth and meaning, or at least the finding of more depth and meaning if not the depth and meaning themselves, have some sort of tangible expression? yes This book? yes Early in the book, Heti identifies her struggles with the mythic struggles of Jacob wrestling with and withstanding the unknown being “until the breaking of the day,” and she concludes the book an altered quote from the Torah: “Then I named this wrestling-place Motherhood, for here is where I saw God face-to-face, and yet my life was spared.” Is that a satisfactory way to end the book? yes Is that a satisfactory way to end my review? no Should I go on? no