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Newborn

Newborn

Running Away, Breaking with the Past, Building a New Family

Summary

The new memoir from prize-winning Kerry Hudson about her struggle to build a safe, loving home for her baby – the very opposite of the home she grew up in...

‘Absorbing’ Irish Times
‘Filled with colour’ Amy Liptrot
‘A rallying cry’ Herald


How do you build a family without a blueprint to work from?

Kerry Hudson grew up in poverty. Always on the move, shuttled between the care system and her chaotic mother, she left school at 15 without qualifications. Now a prize-winning writer, she looks back and asks: how do you create a different life for yourself and your family?

In Newborn we see how Kerry found love, what it took to decide to start a family of her own and how fragile every step of the journey towards parenthood was. All along the way, she faces obstacles that would test the strongest foundations, from struggles with fertility to being locked down in a Prague maternity hospital to a marriage in crisis. But over and over again, her love, hope, fight – and determination to break patterns and give her son a different life – win through and light her path.

PRAISE FOR KERRY HUDSON:

‘It’s not just Kerry Hudson’s writing that is vibrant, authentic and true, it’s the person herself, it’s where the writing comes from; a wise and generous heart’ KIT DE WAAL

'Hudson’s resilience, grace and humility are staggering. She’s an absolute inspiration’ DOUGLAS STUART

‘Kerry Hudson blew me away, opened my eyes’ PHILIPPA PERRY

Reviews

  • Hudson nails many parents' innermost thoughts while asking if she can really give her son a different life
    Red

About the author

Kerry Hudson

Kerry Hudson was born in Aberdeen. Her first novel, Tony Hogan Bought Me an Ice-cream Float Before He Stole My Ma, won the Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust First Book Award and was shortlisted for an array of prizes including the Guardian First Book Award and the Sky Arts Award. Thirst, her second novel, won the prestigious Prix Femina étranger. Lowborn, her highly acclaimed first work of non-fiction, was a Radio 4 Book of the Week, a Guardian and Spectator Book of the Year and Stylist Book of the Decade. It is followed by Newborn. She was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2020.
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