Begoña Gómez Urzaiz – författare

‘The best kind of book: the one you didn’t know you were craving until it appeared … self-interrogative, intricately perceptive. I absolutely inhaled it’ JIA TOLENTINO ‘A very richly interesting exploration of a complex subject. Begoña Gómez Urzaiz tells the stories with such intelligence and wit and generosity’ TESSA HADLEY ‘Fascinating … I suspect there are many, many other mothers who are going to inhale The Abandoners’OBSERVER When it comes to children: a man leaves, a woman abandons Journalist Begoña Gómez Urzaiz is fascinated by women who left their children behind to pursue their artistic lives. Women like Ingrid Bergman, Muriel Spark, Doris Lessing and Joni Mitchell.This book captures those extraordinary stories, along with the realities of women who have no choice but to separate from their families, and the everyday guilt of mothers who dream quietly of freedom.This is a book about motherhood, selfhood, ambition and creativity. Above all, it captures what our judgement of those women who ‘abandon’ tells us about our judgement of all women. ‘The best book I've read on the implications of motherhood and its opposites after Sheila Heti's Motherhood’ CLAUDIA DURASTANTI

‘The best kind of book: the one you didn’t know you were craving until it appeared … self-interrogative, intricately perceptive. I absolutely inhaled it’ JIA TOLENTINO ‘A very richly interesting exploration of a complex subject. Begoña Gómez Urzaiz tells the stories with such intelligence and wit and generosity’ TESSA HADLEY ‘Fascinating … I suspect there are many, many other mothers who are going to inhale The Abandoners’OBSERVER When it comes to children: a man leaves, a woman abandons Journalist Begoña Gómez Urzaiz is fascinated by women who left their children behind to pursue their artistic lives. Women like Ingrid Bergman, Muriel Spark, Doris Lessing and Joni Mitchell.This book captures those extraordinary stories, along with the realities of women who have no choice but to separate from their families, and the everyday guilt of mothers who dream quietly of freedom.This is a book about motherhood, selfhood, ambition and creativity. Above all, it captures what our judgement of those women who ‘abandon’ tells us about our judgement of all women. ‘The best book I've read on the implications of motherhood and its opposites after Sheila Heti's Motherhood’ CLAUDIA DURASTANTI

‘The best kind of book: the one you didn’t know you were craving until it appeared . . . self-interrogative, intricately perceptive. I absolutely inhaled it’ JIA TOLENTINO‘A very richly interesting exploration of a complex subject. Begoña Gómez Urzaiz tells the stories with such intelligence and wit and generosity’ TESSA HADLEY‘Fascinating … I suspect there are many, many other mothers who are going to inhale TheAbandoners’OBSERVERWhen it comes to children: a man leaves, a woman abandons Journalist Begoña Gómez Urzaiz is fascinated by women who left their children behind to pursue their artistic lives. Women like Ingrid Bergman, Muriel Spark, Doris Lessing and Joni Mitchell.This book captures those extraordinary stories, along with the realities of women who have no choice but to separate from their families, and the everyday guilt of mothers who dream quietly of freedom.This is a book about motherhood, selfhood, ambition and creativity. Above all, it captures what our judgement of those women who ‘abandon’ tells us about our judgement of all women.‘The best book I''ve read on the implications of motherhood and its opposites after Sheila Heti''s Motherhood’ CLAUDIA DURASTANTI

‘The best kind of book: the one you didn’t know you were craving until it appeared … self-interrogative, intricately perceptive. I absolutely inhaled it’ JIA TOLENTINO ‘A very richly interesting exploration of a complex subject. Begoña Gómez Urzaiz tells the stories with such intelligence and wit and generosity’ TESSA HADLEY ‘Fascinating … I suspect there are many, many other mothers who are going to inhale The Abandoners’OBSERVER When it comes to children: a man leaves, a woman abandons Journalist Begoña Gómez Urzaiz is fascinated by women who left their children behind to pursue their artistic lives. Women like Ingrid Bergman, Muriel Spark, Doris Lessing and Joni Mitchell.This book captures those extraordinary stories, along with the realities of women who have no choice but to separate from their families, and the everyday guilt of mothers who dream quietly of freedom.This is a book about motherhood, selfhood, ambition and creativity. Above all, it captures what our judgement of those women who ‘abandon’ tells us about our judgement of all women. ‘The best book I've read on the implications of motherhood and its opposites after Sheila Heti's Motherhood’ CLAUDIA DURASTANTI

What kind of mother abandons her child? During the pandemic, trapped at home with young children and struggling to find creative space to write, journalist Begoña Gómez Urzaiz became fixated on artistic women who overcame both society’s condemnation and their own maternal guilt to leave their children—at will or due to economic or other circumstances.The Abandoners is sharp, at times slyly humorous, and always deeply empathetic. Using famous examples such as Ingrid Bergman, Muriel Spark, Doris Lessing, and Maria Montessori as well as fictional ones like Anna Karenina and the many roles of Meryl Streep, and interrogating modern trends like “momfluencers,” Gómez Urzaiz reveals what our judgement of these women tells us about our judgement of all women.