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Milk

On Motherhood and Madness

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Milk

By: Alice Kinsella
Narrated by: Alice Kinsella
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About this listen

Read by the author, Alice Kinsella.

'Sublime' - Donal Ryan, author of Strange Flowers
'Here is a writer who matters' - The Irish Times
'A book about the raw, riotous, brutally beautiful act of being alive.' - Kerri ní Dochartaigh, author of Thin Places
'Milk is a raw, unvarnished journey down the mothering rabbit hole' – The Irish Independent

I have become the common myth. Mother. The sleepy hum of early memories. The smell of shampoo, of Olay, of lavender. The feeling of safety. The absence of fear.

When poet Alice Kinsella becomes a mother, she finds herself utterly lost. As she searches for answers to the question of her new identity, she considers the mothers and writers who came before her. In her inimitable poetic style, Kinsella takes pregnancy and the first nine months of motherhood and forms from them a broken prism through which to view both a woman’s place in the world, and her child’s in the future we’re creating.

‘A radiant, meditative, truly powerful and beautiful book’ – Joseph O’Connor, author of Star of the Sea
‘Spellbinding’ – Rick O’Shea

 Motherhood Parenting & Families Relationships Women

Critic Reviews

A radiant, meditative, truly powerful and beautiful book. (Joseph O'Connor, author of Star of the Sea)
'A compelling and moving account of [Kinsella's] initiation into, and life experiencing motherhood following the birth of her first child in her mid-20s . . . Sharp, brutal, unrelenting, vivid, capturing moments and emotions in the experience and psychology of motherhood, its demands, exhaustion, evocation of mortality, fears and sources of guilt as well as its joys . . . On the strength of this powerful, visceral, memorable, touching and, above all, beautifully rendered prose debut, there is little doubt Kinsella's compelling voice will be listened to: here is a writer who matters' (Arnold Fanning)
This is a book for the ages. It truly is mesmeric, stunningly beautiful, open and intense, revelatory and generous. I love the short bursts, and the sublime way that Alice ranges through life, mental health, art, society, and all the vast complexities, the dangers, the 'pull and sway' of motherhood. I knew what an incredible writer Alice was before I started but this surpasses my highest expectations. (Donal Ryan, author of Strange Flowers )
With its lyrical power, intimacy and political top-notes, Milk is already being compared to works by Doireann Ní Ghríofa, Kerri ní Dochartaigh and Emilie Pine.
Wielding a panoply of shattered literary forms, Alice Kinsella expertly depicts the gradual disintegration of a woman into the motherbaby dyad. MILK is an important addition to the growing canon of work about the physical, political, and philosophical destabilization of motherhood. (Sarah Manguso, author of Very Cold People)
Presented in sharp fragments, this deft meditation pierces straight to the core of motherhood, in all its tenderness and strife. (Aimée Walsh)
I don’t think I’ve ever been more consumed by a book before. I devoured it. It took hold of me, curled right up in beside my bones. A book of women and water , babies and art - the herstory of Ireland - but mostly this is a book about the raw, riotous, brutally beautiful act of being alive. Kinsella manages something rare here; weaving her own story so exquisitely with that of both the human and non human world she is part of. Reading her words on mothering and creating - on care and hope- was an incredibly healing thing indeed. (Kerri ní Dochartaigh, author of Thin Places)
Spellbinding (Rick O'Shea)
Milk is mesmerizing, comforting, angering, delicate, tough, perceptive, funny and clever. Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant. Every page. Every word. Every moment. Every mother, every son, every father, every daughter, every Irish person, every human needs to read this glorious book. (Sarah Moore Fitzgerald, author of All The Money in The World)
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