... tremendous ... Phillips moves deftly through key moments in the lives of her subjects and asks of them (and us): How do you make time for, much less nurture, creativity in the face of parenting? ... Phillips is an expert distiller. Instead of developing complete portraits of the artists and writers, she works to connect themes and ideas. She knows when to tread lightly and keep the expository writing tight; she pulls examples that illustrate her points, leaving the reader hungry to dig further into novels and catalogs on their own ... Phillips’ book is not just a cultural history; it is a testament to endurance and devotion. The entwined work of mothering and creativity is a volatile but illuminating gift. Would that everyone could see it that way.
Phillips explores and explodes the interpenetrations among motherhood and authorship—as a profession and a passion—through analyses of women novelists ... Phillips’s book is engaging and accessible, especially when carefully discussing the private life of Lorde (a Black lesbian mother) and its influence on her writing; black-and-white portraits of the novelists are a highlight ... These constructions are far from new, yet Phillips’s powerfully researched, thoughtful, sensitive examinations will be of interest to literary scholars as well as to general readers grappling with their own oscillating creative and pragmatic selves.
Phillips’s insights—like the disconnect between a creative’s expectation of unbroken focus and the reality of mothering as a state of constant interruption—are essential, but stacks of quotes from famous writers, philosophers, psychoanalysts, and others turn into litanies. This book offers no formula for success, but identifies in its subjects a shared willingness to break with convention and expectation.
This is an uneasy book, which raises many more questions than it answers. Phillips’s own ambivalence is palpable: questioning the project, grappling with her proclivity to judgment and asking what she’s looking for. The book is primarily an inquiry rather than an argument yet the group format tempts the reader to search for connections and conclusions that remain on the one hand elusive, on the other hand obvious. These artists’ experiences of motherhood depend on their support network, temperament, wealth and child-care arrangements; those who become mothers while in the process of defining themselves as artists tend to struggle to reconcile the pulls of different identities more than those with an established body of work, and the benefits (psychological and financial) that tend to accompany it. What emerges most strongly from Phillips’s study is the fact that invisible social structures have, for generations, failed women, their children and their art. We are all the poorer for it.
... thoughtful and heartfelt ... Phillips mostly resists the temptation to judge her subjects for their mothering choices, and her reading of Lessing is sensitive and sympathetic. Yet she flirts with judgment at times, especially in the short section on Susan Sontag ... Although cultural clichés have long presented motherhood as an unchanging state, a woman’s apotheosis, Phillips argues instead that its essence is transformation. By the time the mother of the baby on the fire escape has become the guardian of an empty nest, she has ventured out, fought monsters, faced fears, and become a new version of herself. If we looked differently, Phillips suggests, wouldn’t hers be a 'hero-tale,' her quest as bloody and noble as any knight’s?
... an expansive, absorbing survey of women (mainly writers) who produced notable and often groundbreaking work ... Like these artist-mothers, Ms. Phillips juggles a lot. She has chosen her subjects well, to illustrate varied personal circumstances including race, financial situation, sexual identity and family background. She also picks up on themes of gender inequality addressed in her first book ... Ms. Phillips can’t resist a good story or a good quote, so her book brims with both ... With so much material to keep straight, Ms. Phillips strives to highlight connections and patterns ... Ms. Phillips, who oddly calls these women by their first names, highlights a range of experiences ... Despite her determination not to criticize other mothers’ choices, Ms. Phillips acknowledges that some things these women did made her uncomfortable. But the larger picture remains inspiring ... Although The Baby on the Fire Escape examines the particular challenges of gifted artists as they tried to balance the demands of creative work with the demands of motherhood, the book actually addresses a problem faced by all mothers: how to nurture both the child’s development and one’s own. Ms. Phillips makes it clear in this illuminating work that there’s no single best way to do this. But there are, she concludes, two absolute necessities: time, and a firm sense of what’s important to you as a person in your own right.
