Don’t Forget to Scream

Stands apart from the populous pack of recent books about motherhood for a number of reasons . . . tremendous wit, warmth and acuity . . . humorous observations . . . compelling discussions on childcare challenges and the gender pay gap . . . colourful, charming . . . truly, it's the sort of book that should be pushed into every new parent's hands . . . courageous truth-telling can be found on every page

A brave, unflinching, utterly necessary book. I'm in awe of what it must have taken to write these searing and all too recognisable essays

Brilliant, funny, heartbreaking, and true, Marianne Levy's Don't Forget to Scream had me exploring my own experience of motherhood in an entirely new way. I simply can't stop thinking about it.

You must read this . . . a hilarious reflection on being a mother . . . I've never read a book about motherhood that captures so perfectly the impossible complexity of it all and the massive shift that women experience in the process as Marianne Levy's Don't Forget to Scream . . . Straight-talking and hilarious . . . to say her work is genius would be an understatement. Each essay is a masterpiece, a snippet of deep - and often hilarious - reflection on being a mother in today's society . . . I found many of her observations profound . . . and she revels in the joy of it all too . . . Everything about the book has stuck with me, and though it is a memoir and ultimately Levy's experience, so much of it is universal and all of it is important

Brilliant, brave, honest (and sometimes very funny) . . . Don't Forget To Scream should be read by anyone who has a mother

Marianne's memoir, sometimes poignant, sometimes funny, unflinchingly frank, gives voice to the maelstrom of fear, rage, love and joy, the loss of identity and independence, and the pain that motherhood entails . . . will strike a chord with all parents

I've never read a book about motherhood that captures so perfectly the impossible complexity of it all . . . universal and important

Brings humour to everyday pain . . . a heartfelt attempt to break the discourse about motherhood out of this silo and bring it to a wider and more diverse audience. It's an unvarnished look at the grimy, lonely, frightening, alienating side of pregnancy and motherhood, spanning birth phobia and physical trauma, the erosion of Levy's sense of self and self-worth in the early months and years, and the structural, social, economic bind in which so many mothers find themselves . . . Levy is an engaging, often funny author . . . There's virtuoso swearing, pet fish psychodrama and a revoltingly accurate taxonomy of the various kinds of filth motherhood involved . . . Don't Forget to Scream seeks to challenge the way we minimalise and deny how hard the ordinary business of mothering is

A gut-punch of recollections about early motherhood . . . Incredible, honest writing that gets to the heart of the experience. It's wonderful

A remarkable book, cutting to the quick of what motherhood really feels like - the terror and the rage and the joy of it. The mundane rubs shoulders with the life-changing, the damply humdrum is shot through with calamitous love. I've read so much about motherhood, but I've never read anything as sharply honest as this; mothers will find themselves here

I laughed, I cried and I haven't stopped thinking about it since. A brave, moving, brilliantly-written and often funny exploration of what it means to be a mother. I want everyone to read it

How I wish this book existed when I was a mother of young children. Each essay executes a brilliant swallow-dive from the enervating everyday of parenting into deep waters of profound and unorthodox thought. This is exciting, emboldening writing

Courageous . . . bursting with urgency, both pocket therapy for parents and a keen appraisal of the desperate bind of contemporary motherhood. Levy tells her story with a light touch, an exhausted heart and bright rage. She notes the pleasure, humour and sackfuls of love that exist alongside the sleep deprivation and fury, but more weight is given to the gruelling aspects of motherhood, the hidden spaces . . . If you are a mother, read this book to know you are not alone, to find vindication in your fury. If you are not a mother, read it to empathise with the mothers in your life

I loved these sharp, unusual essays about motherhood and cried my way through much of the book. Childbirth, desire, consumerism and marketing of baby stuff, deciding to have a second child, goldfish. Recommended

Perceptive . . . honest and necessary writing . . . visceral

To describe this book as honest, brave, empathetic and powerful doesn't do it justice - it is all these things in abundance, but also funny and beautiful

A paean to the messy, confounding, chaotic, beautiful, heartbreaking soup that is motherhood - I loved it

Don't Forget To Scream is a stunning, urgent, feminist masterpiece. Many of the essays brought me to tears, and I had to give myself breaks between them to digest their beauty and wisdom and insight before moving onto the next. In a world where motherhood is simultaneously deified and scorned, Levy expertly stitches together what this jarring juxtaposition means for the internal lives of women navigating this. She's brave enough to tell the truth about the daily conflicts between overwhelming love and overwhelming grief at the loss of self - conflicts that are rarely allowed to sit alongside each other, let alone felt within a five minute period. She's angry enough to speak out about the depraved normalisation of gynaecological violence, and the endless other ways mothers are failed by the government and societal expectations. And yet she also writes so beautifully about the overwhelming wonder of having children - the joys, the love, the laughter, and the true magic. So many mothers will see themselves in this book. And anyone who has ever rolled their eyes while a mother struggles to get a buggy onto the bus needs to read it too. A masterclass in empathy. I'm buying copies for everyone I know

Fierce, funny, frightening . . . Marianne Levy offers the unvarnished truth about motherhood, charting both its blisses and its many challenges. Rarely is writing this raw yet also this readable: Don't Forget to Scream digs deep, and the results are can't-look-away compelling. Essential reading for anyone who has kids, is thinking about having kids, knows someone who has kids, was once a kid - basically, for everyone

Honest, witty, powerful and moving . . . an important book brimming with hard-won wisdom

Don't Forget To Scream is funny and heartbreaking - a powerful portrayal of all that makes up motherhood. It feels both intimate and profoundly universal

Beautifully written . . . Insightful and funny, too

Fascinating . . . Although full of love and written in glittering prose, the domestic world the essays present is chaotic and at times full of rage

Don't Forget to Scream is a work of painful genius. Exquisitely written, totally honest, insightful and alternately hilarious and moving. I don't have or want children and might not have picked the book up, thinking it's not "for" me. Which would have been a big mistake. Huge. The beauty of reading is in allowing a skilful writer to not only lead you into their world but picture yourself there. This is what Don't Forget To Scream achieves, and it's utterly compelling

A terrific collection of bracing and often darkly funny personal pieces about the transformative experience of becoming a mother and the extent to which it derails your sense of self. I know I would have fallen upon it with immense gratitude and relief when I had my first child

I finished this book in tears. It perfectly articulates the contradictions of motherhood, the breath-stealing, heart-aching, painful intensity - and, above all, the love. What a book

Extraordinary. Levy brings to life so many feelings and thoughts that have lurked around my subconscious but are hard to look at clearly, let alone articulate. I wanted to read it slowly because it made me feel so many things, but ended up devouring it because it's so damn good

These brilliant essays are filled with the visceral, contradictory emotions of early motherhood. Filled with righteous anger at a society which still hasn't addressed how we mother in the modern world, they'll make you both cry and laugh. Everyone should read these words

Some serious thinking about feminism and its intersection with women's health policy, the environment, employment and the philosophy of everyday life . . . flashes of brilliance . . . She's quite right to point about that women's pain, from the first period cramps to later-life illnesses, is treated differently to men's. And her prose can be lovely . . . Levy comes alive as a writer musing on her own mother, or her daughter's first, poignant questions about the Holocaust, or just her own rather interesting psychological make-up . . . clearly a good writer

Phenomenal. Words like 'searing' and 'extraordinary' and 'blistering' will be used about this book, and they will not convey one tenth of the strength of it, nor the honesty nor the bravery in writing it

The contradictions and complexities of motherhood dissected in a painfully accurate and extraordinarily funny way. Don't Forget to Scream is a must-read for anyone, not just mothers

A terrific collection of bracing and often darkly funny personal pieces about the transformative experience of becoming a mother and the extent to which it derails your sense of self. I know I would have fallen upon it with immense gratitude and relief when I had my first child

I devoured this book about motherhood in all its complex, beautiful, ugly reality. It felt like seeing myself reflected on the page for the first time in the better part of a year. Like shouting out and finally hearing an echo in the darkness . . . I gobbled it up like something delicious and forbidden, something selfishly and exclusively mine . . . When I picked up this book it felt like being seen and heard . . . Reading and writing about mothering in such raw, searing, beautiful honesty is a radical act . . . hearing that my feelings are shared by even one other person - that the bittersweet, aching, love-pain of it all, the good tears and the bad tears, the inertia and the wonder, were not mine alone after all - felt like a revolutionary act of self-care

With wry wit and blistering honesty, her collection of essays shines a light on the untold stories of modern motherhood

Marianne Levy's Don't Forget to Scream tells the truth of modern motherhood like nothing else I've read. Bold, brave and brilliant, it is also full of humour, joy and warmth. I loved it

It's fabulous

Funny, honest, courageous and brilliant . . . I really recommend it

An excellent book . . . elegant, funny, raw and beautiful. It made me angry with myself and the world but it also made laugh. Compulsive reading

A staggeringly, ferociously good book - unflinching but humane, real and funny and courageous, and vitally questioning. I wish we lived in a world where it didn't need to be written

A beautifully, and at times agonisingly, honest confessional. Moving, funny, poignant and inciteful: Marianne's reflections shine a light on both the joys and lies about parenthood with which we're all complicit. This is This is Going To Hurt from the other side of the bed

I recognise it all. And I welcome her urge to "invite other women backstage". Levy is as aware as anyone that motherhood is an ordinary miracle, but she also knows that it is still a miracle . . . I also enjoyed her incredulous anger . . . Don't Forget To Scream becomes really interesting when Levy wonders - usefully, intensely - why we don't talk about such aspects of motherhood . . . Amid all the rage and the wit, Levy writes with great tenderness about her children and the "whole minutes of honeyed joy" she has with them, however hard-won and conflicted that joy might be

A remarkable memoir, threaded with humour and tenderness, and yet exposing the often crushing loneliness and unfairness of motherhood. A must-read for fathers and prospective fathers, this book made me wish I could go back in time and do parenting differently

I read Marianne's book with a constricted throat and welling eyes. Her writing cuts to the quick - so deep, direct, and moving but also wry and funny, often provoking a choked laugh. These essays tug and prod at what it means to be a mother - the 'messy cat's cradle of womanhood' - in the most intimate, powerful and painfully honest way, leaving me ravaged, occasionally enraged, but also feeling profoundly seen