Small: On Motherhoods

Claire Lynch knew having children with her wife would be complicated, but she was surprised by how much the process redrew her life. This dazzling debut begins with the smallest of life's substances, the microscopic cells subdividing in a petri dish in a fertility-treatment centre. Lynch moves through her story in incremental yet ever-growing steps, from the positive pregnancy-test result to the premature arrival of her children, who have to wear scale-model oxygen masks in their life-saving incubators. Poignant and observant—and funny against the odds—Lynch considers whether it is our smallness that makes our lives so big.