The Abandoners

‘The best kind of book: the one you didn’t know you were craving until it appeared . . . self-interrogative, intricately perceptive. I absolutely inhaled it’ JIA TOLENTINO

‘A very richly interesting exploration of a complex subject. Begoña Gómez Urzaiz tells the stories with such intelligence and wit and generosity’ TESSA HADLEY

Ingrid Bergman, Muriel Spark, Maria Montessori . . . what do these vastly different women have in common?

During the pandemic, trapped at home with young children and struggling to find creative space to write, journalist Begoña Gómez Urzaiz became fixated on artistic women who were able to overcome both society’s judgement and their own maternal instincts in order to leave their children. More than anything, she was fascinated by her own prejudice towards these women, so clearly tied up in a much wider cultural bias.

Using famous examples including Doris Lessing, fictional ones such as Anna Karenina, and interrogating modern trends like Momfluencers, Begoña reveals what our judgement of these women tells us about our judgement of all women.

‘The best book I've read on the implications of motherhood and its opposites after Sheila Heti's Motherhood’ CLAUDIA DURASTANTI

Reviews

‘The best kind of book: the one you didn’t know you were craving until it appeared … self-interrogative, intricately perceptive. I absolutely inhaled it’ JIA TOLENTINO, author of TRICK MIRROR

‘A very richly interesting exploration of a complex subject. Begoña Gómez Urzaiz tells the stories of all these different women with such intelligence and wit and generosity’ TESSA HADLEY, author of THE PAST

‘The best book I've read on the implications of motherhood and its opposites after Sheila Heti's Motherhood’ CLAUDIA DURASTANTI, author of STRANGERS I KNOW

About the author

Begoña Gómez Urzaiz is a freelance journalist based in Barcelona. She has published works in El País, La Vanguardia, the Spanish editions of Vogue, Vanity Fair and several others. She co-presents a podcast called Amiga Date Cuenta and teaches Literary Journalism on a Master’s program at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. The Abandoners is her first book.