The Motherload
Episodes from the Brink of Motherhood
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An unflinching motherhood memoir that dares to ask what happens when "what to expect when you're expecting" turns out to be months of rage, anguish, brain fog, and a total surrender of sex, career, and identity.
"A long overdue reality check." --Oprah Daily
"Honest, unapologetic, and brutally funny." --Stephanie Danler, New York Times bestselling author of Sweetbitter
A Most Anticipated Book of 2025 by Oprah Daily, Town & Country, and Brit + Co
"The kid was objectively a tiny worm, even worse, a worm with my nose." Welcome to Sarah Hoover's candid and propulsive take on motherhood where she turns the ecstatic narrative women have been fed--one of immediate connection to your child followed by a joyful path of maternal discovery--on its head.
Like most of us, Sarah Hoover grew up imagining a certain life for herself, and when she moved from Indiana to New York City to study art history, the life she'd imagined began falling into place. She got her degree in art history, landed a job in a gallery, made friends, and met interesting artists, one of whom became her husband. But when Hoover got pregnant, everything in her life began to unravel.
She felt like an imposter in her own body. She grew distant from her friends and husband. Anxiety, fear, guilt, and shame threatened to swallow her. She also experienced trauma at the hands of one of her doctors--a stark trigger. And when her son was born, there was no... joy.
Her despair was persistent, even with help, therapy, and pills. Grieving a lost identity and angry at the world around her, she found herself despising her baby, her husband, and herself. She was afraid it might not end. With the help of a doctor's diagnosis, Hoover began to understand the cluster of symptoms that informed her experience--she was drowning in postpartum depression--and that she wasn't a bad mother or a failed woman.
At its core, The Motherload is about learning to forgive yourself. It's a rejection of the cultural idea of the mother as a perfect being. And it's an honest, propulsive, and often funny take on the vicissitudes of marriage, life, and parenting--a motherhood memoir unlike any other.
About this Author
Sarah Hoover holds a master's degree in cultural theory from Columbia and a BA in art history from NYU. Her writing has been featured in Mother Tongue, The Strategist, and Vogue. The Motherload is her first book.
Reviews
"Hoover's writing is chatty and intimate, but it's her compulsive honesty that makes the book hard to put down...Unsparing... there is something exhilarating about a woman who isn't afraid of looking like a bad mom." --The Cut
"Unfiltered, honest, and amusing... will appeal to many." --Vogue
"With blistering honesty, Hoover lays bare her own extremely messy journey to motherhood and through post-partum depression... A long overdue reality check." --Oprah Daily
"Open, vulnerable, and thoughtful... essential reading for anyone who's felt failed by the parental canon." --Town & Country
"The Motherload is for all the women who wish someone had told them the truth about motherhood. Honest, unapologetic, and brutally funny...it's about developing the strength to care for yourself and, thereby, learning to care for another." --Stephanie Danler, New York Times bestselling author of Sweetbitter
"A stunning memoir about the turbulent yet clarifying initiation into motherhood, and about learning who you are on the other side, The Motherload reads like a no-holds-barred conversation with your funniest best friend. Sarah Hoover has a voice I'd follow anywhere. I kept thinking, Wow, I want everyone to read this wholly vital book about marriage, intimacy, identity, family, art and creativity, and, yes, our relationships with our own mothers. A completely absorbing and addicting ride." --Chelsea Bieker, author of Madwoman and Godshot
"Finally, a funny, smart, and unapologetic treatise on the gap between motherhood's promises and its realities, Sarah Hoover takes readers on a journey marked by hard questions and truths too often buried by cultural narratives that still--despite so many women's experiences to the contrary--frame motherhood as the epitome of womanhood itself. The Motherload is a classic: hilarious, strikingly honest, and utterly unputdownable." --Allie Rowbottom, author of Jell-O Girls and Aesthetica
"A poignant and grimly funny antidote to the saccharine mythology of motherhood and a universal story of the female fight for autonomy in a world dead set on denying it. With page-turning urgency, Hoover takes readers through a long, dark tunnel that ultimately opens onto the messy truth and painful beauty of love." --Molly Roden Winter, author of More: A Memoir of Open Marriage
"I devoured The Motherload in one sitting. Hoover writes with thrilling urgency, drawing readers into the most complex and least discussed aspects of love and marriage. But this book's most powerful gift is its frank, raw, and nearly inadvisable level of honesty around the experience of having a child. Hoover's unvarnished candor about the darkest, most challenging aspects of motherhood ultimately illuminates its profound and transformative power." --Chloé Cooper Jones, author of Easy Beauty
"Fiercely candid [and] admirably frank." --Publisher's Weekly
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