What came first, the essays or the narrator’s story?

It also contains mini-essays on historical figures, such as Wilhelm Rontgen, who discovered the X-ray, and Sigmund Freud. It’s a philosophical whirlwind of a novel, tackling pregnancy, motherhood and the narrator’s grief at the death of her mother. In the end, it took 15 months but Sight is 52,000 words.” Mini-essays I Googled ‘How long is a novel?’ It said 50,000 words was the minimum, so I divided that by 365 minus weekends and it came out at 192 words per day. “I think so,” says Greengrass, “but I found the prospect of writing a novel daunting. Was it galvanising, having to make those two hours count every morning? My boyfriend works from home, so he looked after our daughter while I wrote.” “A year later, I started writing every morning between seven and 9am. “I finished Great Auk on the maternity ward, when I was about to have my daughter three-and-a-half years ago,” says Greengrass.

I can’t think of anything more selfish than making a person and thinking that will make you whole.” “The idea that is the most unselfish thing you can do seems ridiculous to me. Things are changing now and we’re seeing more novels about motherhood.” 192 words a dayīefore writing Sight, Greengrass, 35, published a prize-winning collection of stories, An Account of the Decline of the Great Auk, According to One Who Saw It (2015) – a title which, she says, caused confusion at toddler group when other parents asked what she did for a living. Maggie Nelson’s The Argonauts (2015) is brilliant but it’s a memoir. That’s not a criticism, but I wanted something more ambivalent. “When I wanted to read about it,” says Greengrass, who’s pregnant with her second child, “I found that the only books about motherhood were quite shocking, like Rachel Cusk’s A Life’s Work (2001). Does Greengrass think motherhood, and pregnancy in particular, are often absent from literature?

Sight by jessie greengrass