LITTLE LABOURS

For all new mums and those welcoming new arrivals, this has been described as 'A quietly revolutionary little book' from the award winning young New Yorker. A slanted, enchanted miscellany, Galchen writes about babies and art (with wrongly shaped head) and babies in literature (rarer than dogs or abortions and often monstrous). She writes about the effort of taking a passport photo for a baby not yet able to hold up her head, and the frightening prevalence of orange as today's chic colour for baby gifts, about Frankenstein as a sort of baby, and a baby as a sort of Godzilla. She calls her baby the Puma, and in her calm, literary style makes remarks such as: 'The baby loves to look at photos of babies. And at drawings of babies. And although she doesn't play with other babies often, she observes them on the street with a special interest, with much more interest than she gives to a similarly aloof adult. Albeit with less attention than she would give to a dog. It's a very particular kind of interest, a mirror interest, I am guessing. She doesn't know yet that she is going to get bigger?' 130pp.