When I was younger, thinking about whether I wanted children, I always came back to this formula: If no one had told me anything about the world, I would have invented boyfriends. I'd have invented sex, friendships, art. I would not have invented child-rearing. I would have had to invent those other things to fulfill real longings in me, but if no one had ever told me that a person could create a person, and raise them into a citizen, it wouldn't have occurred to me as something to do. In fact, it would have sounded like a task to very much avoid. After the tumult of her 20s, the narrator of Sheila Heti's new novel finds herself living a life into which she could bring a child. She's with a man who has promised his support if she decides she wants to be a mother, "but you have to be sure." Motherhood chronicles her struggle, under pressure from friends, culture and time, and seeking answers from family, strangers, mysticism and chance, to make a wise and moral choice, and to truly understand what is gained, and what is lost, when a woman becomes a mother.