The Motherload
Sarah Hoover
Genre: Memoir (Nonfiction)
Length: 352 Pages (Hardcover)
Audiobook: 11 Hours, 31 Minutes
Publication Date: January 14, 2025
Get More Info: Goodreads | Storygraph
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Publisher’s Description
An unflinching motherhood memoir that dares to ask what happens when “what to expect when you’re expecting” turns out to be months of rage, anguish, brain fog, and a total surrender of sex, career, and identity.
“The kid was objectively a tiny worm, even worse, a worm with my nose.” Welcome to Sarah Hoover’s candid and propulsive take on motherhood where she turns the ecstatic narrative women have been fed—one of immediate connection to your child followed by a joyful path of maternal discovery—on its head.
Like most of us, Sarah Hoover grew up imagining a certain life for herself, and when she moved from Indiana to New York City to study art history, the life she’d imagined began falling into place. She got her degree in art history, landed a job in a gallery, made friends, and met interesting artists, one of whom became her husband. But when Hoover got pregnant, everything in her life began to unravel.
She felt like an imposter in her own body. She grew distant from her friends and husband. Anxiety, fear, guilt, and shame threatened to swallow her. She also experienced trauma at the hands of one of her doctors—a stark trigger. And when her son was born, there was no… joy.
Her despair was persistent, even with help, therapy, and pills. Grieving a lost identity and angry at the world around her, she found herself despising her baby, her husband, and herself. She was afraid it might not end. With the help of a doctor’s diagnosis, Hoover began to understand the cluster of symptoms that informed her experience—she was drowning in postpartum depression—and that she wasn’t a bad mother or a failed woman.
At its core, The Motherload by Sarah Hoover is about learning to forgive yourself. It’s a rejection of the cultural idea of the mother as a perfect being. And it’s an honest, propulsive, and often funny take on the vicissitudes of marriage, life, and parenting—a motherhood memoir unlike any other.
The Motherload by Sarah Hoover is published by S&S/Simon Element (Simon & Schuster).
Content Advisory
The Motherload by Sarah Hoover includes content that may be sensitive, emotional, or difficult for some readers (e.g., medical trauma, miscarriage, mental illness, and other topics). For reader-submitted content warnings, view them on StoryGraph.
About Sarah Hoover
Sarah Hoover holds a master’s degree in cultural theory from Columbia and a BA in art history from NYU. Her writing has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Harper’s Bazaar, Psychology Today, Mother Tongue, The Strategist, and Vogue. The Motherload is her first book (Simon & Schuster, 2025).
Read more about Sarah Hoover here.
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