When I was younger, thinking about whether I wanted to have children, I always came back to this formula: If no one had told me anything about the world, I would have invented boyfriends. I would have invented sex, friendships, art. I would not have invented child-rearing. Motherhood treats the most universal and consequential decision of early adulthood - whether to have children - with the candour, originality and wit that have won Sheila Heti international acclaim. In her late thirties, at an age when most of her friends are asking themselves when they will become mothers, Heti's narrator considers, with the same urgency, the question of whether she will do so at all. Over the course of several years, casting between the influence of her peers, her partner and her duties to her forebears, the narrator struggles to make a wise and moral choice. After seeking direction from philosophy, theology, mysticism and chance, she finally discovers the answer much closer to home. The result is a courageous, keenly felt and deeply funny novel that will spark conversations about womanhood, about parenthood, and about how - and for whom - to live.