The Hungover Games

May 15, 2020
A British-born entertainment journalist's account of how an unplanned pregnancy and single motherhood became the starting points for an unexpected adventure in self-acceptance. Heawood always imagined that her future would involve "a lovely farmhouse...a dog and storybooks and trees and long invigorating walks" as well as children and a "yet-to-materialize" husband/father. Her present, however, involved singlehood, parties, quirky friends, and lively but unsteady freelance work as a Hollywood celebrity journalist, and the doctors told her that her polycystic ovary syndrome would make natural conception impossible. The next time she visited her long-term on-again, off-again long-distance musician lover, she became pregnant. Despite the lover's misgivings about their fitness to be parents ("he said a child deserved better than us"), Heawood set a determined course for motherhood. But rather than give up her lifestyle, the author carried on along her free-spirited way. She fought through morning sickness at an interview with Jodie Foster while indiscreetly questioning the then-closeted actress about her lesbianism. Later, her "swollen breasts...and...bump" in full view, she attended the Coachella Music Festival with two young men, "one of whom she had only just met." She gave birth in London and then settled down in a rented house in a district she loved for its "psychodrama and paranoia and spilt beer." Floundering in the world of postpartum dating, the author desperately tried to navigate sexuality and motherhood, often with hilarious results. Still single in the end, Heawood realized that her truest love was her small daughter, with whom she formed a small but happy "republic of two." "A single parent is both structure and playground," she writes, "walls and soft landings, mother tropes and father tropes....I have degendered the situation and don't see myself as a mother, but as a parent, as the adult, as the introduction to what the world can be like. As neutral as passion, as pretty as heat." Raw and funny, Heawood's memoir celebrates the messiness of life and motherhood with boldness, panache, and unexpected moments of real poignancy. An uncensored and eccentric delight.

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June 5, 2020

Journalist Heawood chronicles life and motherhood; notably, after a series of events led her to believe that she could not get pregnant for medical reasons. Heawood, who still enjoys her clubbing nights out, juggles those nights sans alcohol and drugs and still tries to live her best life in the dating world. What follows is a series of dating experiences that alternate between laugh-out-loud funny and cringe-worthy. Throughout, Heawood maintains her dry sense of humor and perspective as she deals with an unexpected pregnancy. While much of the narrative details her pregnancy, later chapters cover the balance of new motherhood as a single parent and the author's love relationships. Heawood finds herself straddling two worlds, still trying to steal a few hours away to indulge what she describes as the eternal optimism of singleness, believing her life's great love must be just around the corner. Instead, she finds a new sense of parenthood culminating in the ultimate realization that perhaps her family is complete as a twosome. VERDICT Bridget Jones's Diary meets Sex in the City, Heawood's entertaining account should appeal to fans of similar memoirs on single parenting, motherhood, and relationships.--Stacy Shaw, Denver

Copyright 2020 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from June 1, 2020
Smart, funny, and touching, this memoir from British-based journalist and commentator Heawood tells the story of her life in Hollywood, interviewing celebrities and going to posh parties while barely making ends meet. As a single woman in her thirties doing what she loved, a lack of funds didn't bother her, but after a sexy rendezvous at the famous Chateau Marmont with her old friend, the Musician, she discovers that she's pregnant. Without the support of the father or the assurance that she can continue working in the U.S., Heawood's family convinces her to move back to London where she must confront the realities of being a single mother while trying to hold on to the freedom she enjoyed as a rave kid in the 1990s. The answer? East London baby raves. Her journey from singlehood to motherhood is captured in delightful vignettes with cheeky titles like, And a fart at a party threatens to destabilise Los Angeles and Should you breastfeed on a first date? Heawood presents a perfect mashup of wit and style with excellent comedic timing and the ability to capture the essence of whatever scene she is observing. Recommended for everyone who enjoys memoirs that read like humor essays � la Nora Ephron.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)

November 16, 2020
British journalist Heawood debuts with a hilarious recounting of her rocky experiences of an unplanned pregnancy and single motherhood. Heawood, at the age of 34, was told by doctors that she would not be able to conceive. However, after a one-night stand with a musician “in a dressing room somewhere in Europe” she became pregnant. After she broke the news to him (he is only referrred to through as “the musician”), he expressed his concern that “they could not create the stability a whole new person deserved.” However, she was determined to make her new reality a part of her vibrant single life, which was filled with late nights, parties, and sleeping on the couches of quirky friends. A scene where she interviewed celebrity Jodie Foster while fighting morning sickness, meanwhile, is particularly humorous. The narrative is strongest when Heawood muses on her role as a parent who must, among other things, provide “structure and a playground with soft landings” and reinvent the concept of the nuclear family to suit her two-person household. There’s a lot to love in this delightful look into the world of unexpected motherhood.