About the Author

Lucy Jones is a writer and journalist based in Hampshire, England. She previously worked at NME and the Daily Telegraph, and her writing on culture, science and nature has been published in GQ, BBC Wildlife, The Sunday Times, the Guardian and the New Statesman. Her first book, Foxes Unearthed, was celebrated for its 'brave, bold and honest' (Chris Packham) account of our relationship with the fox, winning the Society of Authors' Roger Deakin Award 2015.

Reviews

The best book I've ever read about motherhood ... Myths are smashed from page one ... Experimental flourishes - alongside all that beautiful, accessible writing - add to its majesty. Matrescence is essential reading, bloody and alive, roaring and ready to change conversations -- Jude Rogers * Observer *
I kept scribbling in the margins: 'We need to know this stuff!' ... An important addition to the literature of motherhood ... [It is] wide-ranging in its scope, packed with statistics about mental health, new studies on the rewiring of women's brains after childbirth and the presence of foetal cells in our bodies ... Jones seems to come as close as it's possible to describing this indescribable moment in a woman's life -- Joanna Pocock * Spectator *
A wild and beautiful book ... a book that will be passed among friends and will no doubt bring solace ... Reading this, I felt a jolt of recognition ... more than six years later I can still feel the searing, silencing shame. I wish someone could have handed me Matrescence -- Sophie McBain * New Statesman *
An exploration of the contrast between myth and reality and between individual and social expectations ... Jones writes beautifully and with searing honesty about the life-changing physical and emotional impact of having a child -- Rachel Sylvester * The Times *
A vital, hopeful book ... to read Matrescence is to emerge chastened and ready for change -- Marianne Levy * i News *
Beautiful and creative ... Jones is a pioneer ... she skilfully elucidates the monumental shifts motherhood brings ... I found myself inwardly cheering -- Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett * Guardian *
Matrescence took me on a journey of reminescence through my own pregnancies and early years of motherhood, eliciting wry recognition, surprise at new evidence and insight, and gratitude for a work that really sees what it is to mother -- Clare Chambers
A beautiful contemplation of the extraordinary yet ordinary metamorphosis that adult humans undergo as they become mothers ... I was entranced ... Matrescence is a passionate and powerful maternal roar for change -- Gaia Vince
Hypnotic, fascinating and long overdue. I am so glad it exists. A gift of a book and told beautifully. -- Laura Dockrill
Matrescence is the book I've been waiting for. It feels like a gift. Radical, questioning and profound, it urges us to recognise and honour the many transformations of motherhood. With the deepest compassion for her fellow mothers, Lucy Jones shows us how contemporary society stacks the odds against them and calls us to imagine new ways of parenting which care for and support those at its heart -- Liz Berry
You'll marvel, wince and want to take to the streets after reading Lucy Jones sweeping and courageous multidisciplinary survey of the motherlands. I wish we'd read it before we had our kid. (Mother) nature read in truth and awe -- Tom Mustill
I was challenged, comforted, educated and nourished by this book ... It is the single most powerful, life-changing, heartachingly healing thing I have been given ... The kind of book we must ensure every one of us reads -- Kerri ni Dochartaigh
A beautiful, intelligent book that is as tender and moving as it is demanding and urgent. There is something insightful and original in the way Lucy Jones seamlessly combines the analytical with the emotional, and it is an absolutely essential new addition to the literature of mothering and parenthood -- Clover Stroud
This book should be a must-read for pretty much everyone. We don't talk about the hidden realities of the biological, social and psychological effects of matrescence nearly enough. Thank you, Lucy Jones, for changing that -- Dr Jodi Pawluski
Fascinating -- Henry Mance (via Twitter)
Dazzling... Matrescence cements Jones' place as one of the most talented nonfiction writers we have. It really is *astonishingly* good -- Oli Franklin-Wallis (via Twitter)
I was challenged, comforted, educated, nourished, soothed and reassured by this book. Almost three years into my own matrescence, this book is the single most powerful, life-changing, heartachingly healing thing I have been given. For it is, first and foremost, a gift. To have journeyed , and still be journeying, through this wild, raw, many coloured land of such unknowns, and to share that journey-the pain and the joy; the grief and love; the anxiety and the hope - in this way is nothing short of grace. This book is the kind of book we must ensure every one of us reads; every single person sharing this earth side by side with our kin of every form. For, as Lucy shows us so tenderly and luminously; we are more finely interwoven than we've been led to believe; more animal than we might ordinarily take ourselves for. Certain experiences change us, bring us closer to the blood and shit and milk and bone. Matrescence holds the power to carry us back to ourselves, to the rituals and community from which we came; the caregivers we all hold the seed within us to become- and Lucy Jones is the person who should have written it. I am so glad she did . She has given us mammals such a gift, one that will save lives -- Kerri ni Dochartaigh