FICTION

Giada Sundas is a natural storyteller, she has the rare ability to take you from laughter to tears in the space of a few lines. A book about how becoming responsible for another life means becoming responsible for our own, as well. — Matteo Bussola, author of Sleepless Nights and Kisses for Breakfast, Einaudi

A joyful tale about motherhood and love, and the rebellious acts that keep us alive. 

There were days when I made a plan of action the evening before, others when I pulled you out of bed yelling, improvised breakfast from left-overs found in the car and washed your face in the street fountain outside school. As soon as she felt a tiny heart start to beat inside her, Giada started to be a mother. But not until she held that life in her arms did it really exist. The moment before, Giada was one person – the moment after, another, and forever. Mothers are reborn. From that moment onwards she studied all the baby books on the market and listened to all sorts of advice. So that Mya, her most precious gift, would be safe, protected, loved. Yet things didn’t always go as described in the books, or in the way she had been told. And that was when she discovered a great truth: there are no unbreakable rules, laws, dogmas. You learn the job of being a mother day by day, on the spot, in between a lullaby filled with words of affection, and regurgitated food that leaves a stain on your T-shirt for days on end.

Between an unexpected hug that transforms your day and a cartoon you can’t stand because you’ve learned it by heart. There’s not “a way”, the answers are inside every mother, deep down there, where instinct lives. Where the most unconditional love you can ever experience lives and grows. Where there’s no need to consult an encyclopaedia to know what you should or shouldn’t do. Imperfection is the only truth. The soft feel of a dribbly kiss, the beauty of a ponytail that won’t stay straight. The rebellion of choosing one sock a different colour from the other. These are the little pieces of magic that make a happy child. Because only by not following the rules do you find the courage to be the mother you choose to be.

A début that is rooted in real life and goes straight to the heart. A gift for a little, two-year-old girl, so that one day she’ll be able to find out how she came into the world, what love, mistakes and choices lay behind it all. A story about motherhood, the real sort that you build step after step, one effort after another, one piece of happiness after another.

Giada Sundas does many different things in life, all badly, especially being a mother. She has a passion for words, for the magic that comes from the jigsaw of letters building poetry. She reads five hours a day, writes for six, sleeps for three and in the time remaining defrosts Cordon Bleus in the microwave. She dreams of making a living from writing but being thin wouldn’t be bad, either.