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Mother Ship

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Mother Ship

By: Francesca Segal
Narrated by: Francesca Segal
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About this listen

Random House presents the audiobook edition of Mother Ship, written and read by Francesca Segal.

‘Heart-wrenching, heart-warming and heartfelt – Mother Ship is a beautifully crafted, warts-and-all love letter to our wonderful NHS’ Adam Kay, author of This is Going to Hurt

‘Our greatest gift to one another is this: each woman here has been swept out by a riptide, pulled far from the current of normal motherhood. Apart and all together in this space, our odd craft, we are drawn back into the folds of the unremarkable.’

After her identical twin girls were born ten weeks prematurely, Francesca Segal finds herself sitting vigil in the ‘mother ship’ of neonatal intensive care, all romantic expectations of new parenthood obliterated. Her gripping diary of those months combines the tenderness of a love poem with the compulsive pace of a thriller. As each day brings a fresh challenge for her and her babies, Francesca makes a temporary life among a band of mothers who are vivid, fearless, and inspiring, taking care not only of their children but of one another.

MOTHER SHIP is an intimate, raucous, sublime and electrifying memoir. It is a hymn to the sustaining power of women’s friendship, and a loving celebration of the two small girls – and their mother – who defy the odds.

 Children's Health Friendship Infants & Toddlers Motherhood Parenting & Families Relationships

Critic Reviews

A heart-wrenching insight into what must have been such a fragile, overwhelming and terrifying time - yet there’s humour in there too. Beautiful
[Segal] writes with delicate eloquence, combining passion and comic understatement so deftly that this feels the only way the book could have been written… I don’t think I’ve turned the pages so urgently in a book about motherhood before (Lara Feigal)
A beautiful memoir: wise, moving and profoundly humane. Segal writes with such exquisite clarity that each word is a gift, each sentence a votive offering. Mother Ship moved me to tears, but it also taught me the unassailable power of decency and kindness when life is at its most fragile and vulnerable. A book that left me changed for having read it
As gripping as a thriller and as moving as a love story (Amanda Craig)
A compelling and emotionally taut exploration of what it means to be a parent in unexpected and challenging circumstances... The pages of Mother Ship are filled with love, anguish, despair and hope in the face of adversity. As a memoir, it is both insightful and moving; as a diary of 56 days in neonatal care, it is an exquisitely written paean to motherhood (Hannah Beckerman)
I was bowled over by the beauty and terror of Mother Ship. I’m in awe of Francesca Segal’s honesty and courage, never mind her sublime, subtle writing. This is a vital, necessary book, not just about motherhood but about survival, care and the sustaining power of women in adversity
This is a marvellous humbling book about the fear and joy of giving birth to incredibly tiny premature twins. It's so tender, so moving, so blackly comic, and so involving your own heart beats fast as you read on.
[A] radiant memoir… Segal writes beautifully… Mother Ship stands out most of all for its refreshing absence of solipsism… Instead, she has written a paean to the depthless kindness of other people: the solidarity of fellow mothers who sustain each other with pastries and sound advice; the peerless machinery of the NHS, with its unsung army of workers… Segal’s writing…serves as its own restorative act of love (Claire Allfree)
Francesca Segal is an award-winning writer and Mother Ship is a masterclass in style. A beautiful, lyrical memoir that navigates the unpredictable landscape of NICU and the will to survive.
Transcendent, moving, but thoughtful and necessary too, Mother Ship is its own miraculous achievement (Lucy Scholes)
All stars
Most relevant
70 years ago, I was born some 8 weeks early and I lost my sight owing to retinopathy of prematurity. In this beautifully crafted volume, Francesca openly and honestly diarises her time as a prem Mum of twin girls who were born at 30 weeks. What struck me was the camaraderie of the prem Mums, the caring of the staff, and how Francesca and her Husband held everything together. I wish their twin girls the richness in their lives which has been bestowed upon me.

Prem Babies, Mums And Dads

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