Nobody Told Me by Hollie McNish

Book Review by Ceris Aston | 29 Jan 2016
Book title: Nobody Told Me: Poetry & Parenthood
Author: Hollie McNish

Nobody Told Me: Poetry and Parenthood chronicles three years and nine months of poet Hollie McNish’s life, from discovering she was pregnant – ‘After King’s Cross toilets / after a blue cross / after hands-in-face / with confused then laughing sobs’ – to her daughter’s first day at pre-school, aged three – ‘You seemed less bothered than me.’ A diary of poems, written in snatched moments away from her roles as mother and lover, the book offers an immediate, seemingly unfiltered insight into McNish’s life, and into her experience of motherhood.

In her diary, the poet records her guilt, pain, wonder, exhaustion, frustration, joy, anger and love. There’s no photoshopping here, no smoothing out of the bags under tired eyes or images of serenely smiling mothers breastfeeding on white sofas. There’s crying from exhaustion and cracked nipples and wiping snot from noses and hiding in public loos to feed. There’s the endless barrage of judgment on how to do motherhood right. There is love: for her partner, for her family, for Little One. There is wonder. ‘It is indescribable/ witnessing this small human change.’

It’s a moving and profoundly personal account. Yet at the same time, Nobody Told Me offers an insight into the shared, unspoken experiences of many mothers. McNish describes Nobody Told Me as ‘All the things I couldn’t talk about.’ It feels like time that we started talking. 

Out 4 Feb, published by Little, Brown Book Group, RRP £13.99