Publishers Weekly
11/16/2020
British journalist Heawood debuts with a hilarious recounting of her rocky experiences of an unplanned pregnancy and single motherhood. Heawood, at the age of 34, was told by doctors that she would not be able to conceive. However, after a one-night stand with a musician “in a dressing room somewhere in Europe” she became pregnant. After she broke the news to him (he is only referrred to through as “the musician”), he expressed his concern that “they could not create the stability a whole new person deserved.” However, she was determined to make her new reality a part of her vibrant single life, which was filled with late nights, parties, and sleeping on the couches of quirky friends. A scene where she interviewed celebrity Jodie Foster while fighting morning sickness, meanwhile, is particularly humorous. The narrative is strongest when Heawood muses on her role as a parent who must, among other things, provide “structure and a playground with soft landings” and reinvent the concept of the nuclear family to suit her two-person household. There’s a lot to love in this delightful look into the world of unexpected motherhood. (Nov.)
From the Publisher
"Raw and funny, Heawood's memoir celebrates the messiness of life and motherhood with boldness, panache, and unexpected moments of real poignancy. An uncensored and eccentric delight."—Booklist
"Finally the book that single mothers across the globe have been waiting for. . . . Funny, dark and true."—Cailtin Moran
"Single motherhood gets a caustic spin in this intercontinental memoir. Sophie Heawood revisits the time her life fell apart: when she left L.A. for her native England while pregnant, and her musician boyfriend walked out on her."—Entertainment Weekly
"Sophie has the ability to write as if she's talking only to you, in moments of humour and pathos. She makes you feel like you're not on your own. I always feel both inspired and comforted after reading her work. She has a voice as a solo parent that I don't think is represented in the world today. I am, and will always be, her biggest fan."—James Corden
"Unflinching yet comic."—Cosmopolitan (UK)
"The Hungover Games deftly explores expectations of modern womanhood through a beautiful, wild, painfully honest, hilarious and sometimes heartbreaking story. Full of adventure and awe, Sophie Heawood has written a soulful, truthful homage to a life lived with appetite, intensity and wonder."—Dolly Alderton
"It's a deeper, funnier, realer, more poignant Bridget Jones. I have never read a more accurate account of what it feels like to be a parent, especially a single one."—Philippa Perry
Library Journal
06/05/2020
Journalist Heawood chronicles life and motherhood; notably, after a series of events led her to believe that she could not get pregnant for medical reasons. Heawood, who still enjoys her clubbing nights out, juggles those nights sans alcohol and drugs and still tries to live her best life in the dating world. What follows is a series of dating experiences that alternate between laugh-out-loud funny and cringe-worthy. Throughout, Heawood maintains her dry sense of humor and perspective as she deals with an unexpected pregnancy. While much of the narrative details her pregnancy, later chapters cover the balance of new motherhood as a single parent and the author's love relationships. Heawood finds herself straddling two worlds, still trying to steal a few hours away to indulge what she describes as the eternal optimism of singleness, believing her life's great love must be just around the corner. Instead, she finds a new sense of parenthood culminating in the ultimate realization that perhaps her family is complete as a twosome. VERDICT Bridget Jones's Diary meets Sex in the City, Heawood's entertaining account should appeal to fans of similar memoirs on single parenting, motherhood, and relationships.—Stacy Shaw, Denver
Kirkus Reviews
2020-04-20
A British-born entertainment journalist’s account of how an unplanned pregnancy and single motherhood became the starting points for an unexpected adventure in self-acceptance.
Heawood always imagined that her future would involve “a lovely farmhouse…a dog and storybooks and trees and long invigorating walks” as well as children and a “yet-to-materialize” husband/father. Her present, however, involved singlehood, parties, quirky friends, and lively but unsteady freelance work as a Hollywood celebrity journalist, and the doctors told her that her polycystic ovary syndrome would make natural conception impossible. The next time she visited her long-term on-again, off-again long-distance musician lover, she became pregnant. Despite the lover’s misgivings about their fitness to be parents (“he said a child deserved better than us”), Heawood set a determined course for motherhood. But rather than give up her lifestyle, the author carried on along her free-spirited way. She fought through morning sickness at an interview with Jodie Foster while indiscreetly questioning the then-closeted actress about her lesbianism. Later, her “swollen breasts…and…bump” in full view, she attended the Coachella Music Festival with two young men, “one of whom she had only just met.” She gave birth in London and then settled down in a rented house in a district she loved for its “psychodrama and paranoia and spilt beer.” Floundering in the world of postpartum dating, the author desperately tried to navigate sexuality and motherhood, often with hilarious results. Still single in the end, Heawood realized that her truest love was her small daughter, with whom she formed a small but happy “republic of two.” “A single parent is both structure and playground,” she writes, “walls and soft landings, mother tropes and father tropes….I have degendered the situation and don’t see myself as a mother, but as a parent, as the adult, as the introduction to what the world can be like. As neutral as passion, as pretty as heat.” Raw and funny, Heawood’s memoir celebrates the messiness of life and motherhood with boldness, panache, and unexpected moments of real poignancy.
An uncensored and eccentric delight.
