Jessica Urlichs writes about the hour of the night when the house is finally quiet and you are still awake, and about the fact that you can adore a child and miss the person you were before them in the same breath. That is the whole subject of this collection, and she does not soften either half of it.

The poems are short. Most of them run under a page, which matters more than it sounds, because this is a book bought by people who read in five minute pieces with someone asleep on them. They move in rough order from pregnancy through the newborn fog and the toddler years to the first school gate, so a mother tends to find her own week somewhere in it within a few minutes of opening the cover.

Urlichs began by posting these on the internet, where they were shared until the pages of screenshots led back to her. This is the Penguin Life edition of the selection, and it opens with a dedication that is one line long: for the mothers who walk each other home. Zoe Blaskey, who founded Motherkind, writes that reading it feels like a long exhale. Giovanna Fletcher calls it a beautiful companion to keep by her side.

It is a good gift precisely because it is not a manual. Nobody is being told what to do with a sleep schedule. It is the book you hand a new mother, or your own mother, when what you actually want to say is that you saw how hard it was.

Paperback, 224 pages, 197 by 128 by 14 mm. Penguin Life, an imprint of Penguin Books, 7 March 2024. ISBN-13 9780241653333. Set in Garamond MT and printed in Great Britain on FSC certified paper. A Sunday Times bestseller.

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