It’s never the right time to have a child. First we want to live, travel, work. Antonella wants to become a writer: it’s her sole ambition, nothing else. When
she’s in her twenties, she has no qualms about ending two pregnancies. Now, years later, a partner by her side, when she feels ready to be a mother, she discovers that her body isn’t. And so begins the cruel journey through perseverance, obsession, medication. A dive into the body’s implacable limits.
While it may sound familiar, this story is nothing but. You feel caught in an avalanche but still capable of seeing the world around you as you tumble through
space; you feel disbelief, you cheer yourself on, you swear out loud, you smile to give yourself courage.
In a crescendo of incredible narrative force and firsthand, Antonella Lattanzi experiences a desire so unsparing it will stop at nothing, deep feelings of guilt, insensitive doctors, friendships capable of withstanding silences and horrible intimacies, a relationship with her partner that seems to always be on the verge of crumbling, a ferocious rage towards the world (and pregnant women). And throughout, she keeps the reader right there with her, glued to the page, creating an aura of suspense akin to that of a thriller, all thanks to her masterful juxtaposition of events.
The most stunning aspect of this book is that even though it is an exceptional and raw story, it is also very true, genuine, timely, and it regards women across the board – mothers but not only – who, at some point in their lives, have asked themselves: do I want a child? When? Will I have to give up my ambitions, myself? Why is it so easy for everyone else to get pregnant but not me?

“To this day we say things like, ‘That’s women’s stuff’. And when it comes to women’s stuff – the secret workings of their bodies, their intelligence, their desires – we men recoil, make jokes, feel ill-at-ease, say sappy things, delimit our otherness. We do it even when it comes to the joy, refusal, devouring desire, and arduous pain of conceiving and expelling a being from another being. With utterly cruel devotion and gut-wrenching emotion, and in a way that has never been done before, Antonella Lattanzi shows us that women’s stuff – the flesh and blood and beating heart of female life that craves to generate another pounding heart despite the multitude of dangers lurking in nature, science, institutional inefficiency, and human savagery – is the only real tool we can use to assess the state of the world, hanging as it is between probable abyss and possible salvation”.
Domenico Starnone

“Antonella Lattanzi is one of those rare writers who help men understand the secrets of the female soul, the desire for motherhood, and the miracle of childbirth. She does so using truth, talent, and the cruel lucidity of a person who is afraid of no one”.
Niccolò Ammaniti

“This book touched me to the core. Literature is a magical art, and Antonella Lattanzi has written a book that is part blessing, part curse, and entirely cathartic”.
Nicola Lagioia