With Mother’s Day just around the corner, we’ve rounded up a list of books that would make great Mother’s Day gifts. Browse the list below, or visit our new titles page for more ideas.
Auscultation means listening and specifically, in medicine, listening to sounds that come from the body’s internal organs. If listening is a central theme of this collection, it is also about being heard. Ilse Pedler is poet of breadth and depth. There are poems about waiting rooms and surgical instruments, about crisis calls, about overhearing farmers and pet owners and colleagues. There are poems about surviving a stern childhood and a heartbreaking sequence about being a stepmother. This is a compelling set of poems from a striking new voice.
Through a unique combination of interviews, poems, and essays by established writers, Writing Motherhood interrogates contemporary representations of motherhood in media and literature. It asks why so many novels dealing with serious women’s issues are packaged in pink covers with wellies and tea cups, and demonstrates how the exquisite moments of motherhood often enrich artistic practice rather than hinder it. Writing Motherhood is a vital exploration of the complexities of contemporary sexual politics, publishing, artistic creation, and 21st Century parenting.
Cecil & Noreen is a poignant, subtle and amusing love story in which an elderly couple reminisce about their marriage. In a nursing home, Cecil recollects the memories through the aide-memoir of Noreen’s preserved letters which he keeps in a box by his bed. Noreen visits the ailing Cecil twice daily, and provides a more reliable version of the events the letters describe. Both are committed Catholics. The novel opens with their first meeting at church, at which Noreen accidentally floors Cecil with a ceremonial banner. Beautifully-written and deeply compassionate, Cecil & Noreen ennobles the ’ordinary’ lives of its characters.
When Rosanne Alexander’s boyfriend Mike was offered the job of warden of Skomer Island, they had just ten days to leave college, marry (a condition of employment) and gather their belongings and provisions. In Waterfalls of Stars, Rosanne Alexander relates their experiences, including her observations of the island’s wildlife and landscape. Her lyrical evocation of the natural world will inspire and entertain anyone who has felt the need for escape.
The World, the Lizard and Me is a novel of testament to the plight of children caught up in the civil wars of Central Africa. First published in 2009, this translation by David Homel is the first in English. The World, the Lizard and Me follows the life of Claude Tremblay who, from the age of eleven has sought justice for thousands of voiceless victims. Now an investigator at the International Criminal Court in The Hague, he is pursuing Thomas Kabanga, a warlord charged with creating child soldiers in the Congo. Gil Courtemanche draws on his own experiences to write a novel of gripping immediacy.
Women’s Work – Edited by Eva Salzman and Amy Wack
With over 250 contributors, Women’s Work brings together generous selection of poetry by women, with an emphasis on twentieth-century poetry in English. Featuring poets from the USA, Canada, England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Australia, and New Zealand, it is arranged by thematic chapters that touch on various aspects of modern life. Women’s Work aims to be a touchstone of women’s thoughts and experiences; to be entertaining and relevant as well as inclusive and representative of some of the best poetry published today.
In Welsh Quilts expert author Jen Jones presents an authoritative guide to the history and art of the quilt in Wales. Driven by her desire to see this gloriously high-quality craft revived, Jones set out to research the topic which led to the creation of her extensive quilt collection, now housed in the Welsh Quilt Centre in Lampeter. Including stunning, high resolution images of the bold designs and intricate stitching of the quilts in her collection, Welsh Quilts is the essential book on the subject, whether you are a quilter yourself, or simply interested in quilting heritage.
Call Mother a Lonely Field mines the emotional archaeology of family, home and language as the author attempts to break their tethers, and the refuge he finds within them. Liam Carson confronts the complex relationship between a son thinking in English, a father dreaming in Irish ‘in a room just off the reality I knew’, and a mother who, after raising five children through Irish, is no longer comfortable speaking it in the violent reality of 1970s Belfast.
When Tessa’s best friend organises a surprise TV makeover, Tessa is horrified. It’s the last thing she needs. What’s more, the ‘Greenham Common angle’ the TV producers have devised reopens some personal history Tessa has tried to hide away. Moving between the present and 1982, and set against the backdrop of the mass protests which touched thousands of women’s lives, Love and Fallout is a book about friendship, motherhood and the accidents that make us who we are. A hugely entertaining novel from debut novelist and award-winning poet Kathryn Simmonds.
A Second Whisper is a thoughtful and sensitive collection that reflects the changing identities of a woman: in motherhood, in widowhood, in friendship and grief. Hjelmgaard looks back upon her life in New York, Demark, The Caribbean, and London. There are elegies to her late husband as well as to her mentor and partner, the renowned Welsh poet Dannie Abse, who died in 2014. Her lyrics are precise, warm in tone, and suffused with optimism for the future.
First published in 1948, The Old And The Young is a collection of short stories by Margiad Evans (1909-1958). These many of these fifteen stories, all but one written during the Forties, the hardships of rural living are exacerbated by the war. Men are absent, families are separated, women have to shoulder added burdens. This collection is testament to the quiet heroism of the home front, to the stoic resourcefulness of those who have no cenotaph. Indeed, in war or in peace, it is Evans’s ability to delineate the defining nature of small incidents, and to uncover in a precise locality moments of profound spirituality, which raise The Old And The Young to the level of a classic.
Ed Beech is one half of Beech Building Services. He’s based in Bermondsey but no job’s too small, no distance too great. So when he’s asked to do some work on a house in Orkney, he loads the van with paint, tools and sandwiches, and takes off. He gets nervous around farm animals and large ships, and he’s never been so far north, but when he’s joined by Claire, his client’s city banker sister, he discovers that in Stromness, anything is possible.
If you’re looking for a gift that will last a whole year, why not treat Mum to a one year Seren Gift Subscription? Seren Subscribers receive three brand-new Seren books across the year – one poetry, one fiction and one non-fiction – plus a host of other exclusive perks. We’ll post them a gift card explaining who the subscription is from, as well as a welcome pack containing a Subscriber tote-bag, notebook and pen in anticipation of their first book arriving in May 2022.
Browse our new titles pages for more great gift ideas.
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