Mother’s Day is fast approaching and this can be a challenging time for some people, whether due to death, difficulties with trying to conceive, or just regular old complicated feelings.

A couple of years ago we published a blog post featuring reading recommendations for people who find Mother’s Day difficult. You can read our original post here and we’ve included additional suggestions below.

For people whose mothers have died…

• In What Will I Wear to Your Funeral?, journalist and writer Kellie Curtain shares the story of how her family responded to her mother’s cancer diagnosis – with a mix of fear and bravery, and lots of conversations.
  
  
• The Summer Book is a profoundly life-affirming novel from Finnish author Tove Jansson in which an elderly artist and her young granddaughter while away a summer together on a tiny island. The two discuss a wide range of subjects, including the mother’s recent death.
  
  
• George Saunders won last year’s Man Booker Prize for Lincoln in the Bardo, a ghostly reimagining of the death of Abraham Lincoln’s son at the dawn of the Civil War. This is a rich and moving work of fiction that beautifully renders the intensity of grief.
  
  
• Edwidge Danticat’s The Art of Death is at once a personal account of her mother dying from cancer and a deeply considered reckoning with the ways that other writers have approached death in their own work.
  
  
• Jean Harley was Here is a poignant, bittersweet and charming novel that explores the aftermath of a terrible accident by following those left behind.

For people having trouble trying to conceive…

• Former Australian Netball Captain Liz Ellis shares a lot of friendly, practical and heartfelt advice in If At First You Don’t Conceive. She draws from her own experiences trying to conceive, as well as interviews with various specialists and other couples.
  
  
• If you’re the kind of person who works through difficulties by facing them head on, you might be tempted by Stay With Me. Set against the social and political turbulence of 1980s Nigeria, this critically acclaimed debut novel from Ayòbámi Adébáyò is a heartbreaking story of how one couple’s desire for a child impacts their marriage and life.
  
  
• Billed as an African American version of The Great Gatsby, Stephanie Powell Watts’s debut No One Is Coming to Save Us is an immersive literary novel that digs into a wealth of themes including fertility.
  
  
• Belle Boggs’ The Art of Waiting is a brilliant exploration of the natural, medical, psychological, and political facets of fertility.
  
  
• If you’re considering looking into adoption, Robin Benway’s Far From the Tree is a heartwarming young adult novel with crossover appeal for adults. It’s the story of three siblings, separated at birth, who reunite in their teen years and decide to track down their birth mother.

For people who have strained relationships with their mothers…

• Tara Westover’s family memoir Educated is ideal for anyone who enjoyed The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls or The Liars’ Club by Mary Karr.
  
  
• In Emily Ruskovich’s debut novel, Idaho, a woman tries to make sense of why her husband’s ex-wife murdered their young daughter.
  
  
• Jesmyn Ward writes prose like no-one else. Her award-winning second work of fiction, Sing, Unburied, Sing, sees a family road trip beset by ghosts and other dangers. The interactions between the mother, Leonie, and her two children are incredibly fraught and heartbreaking.
  
  
• In Fierce Attachments, the inimitable Vivian Gornick traces her lifelong struggle for independence from her mother. This is a intelligent, raw book that allows for contradictions to breathe.
  
  
• Where’d You Go, Bernadette is a sharply comic novel about a mother in the midst of an extended mid-life crisis, and 15-year-old daughter who wants to find her. This is a more lighthearted read than the others on this list, but still an authentic depiction of a strained parent-child relationship.

For people who have no interest in parenthood…

• Afterglow is a genre-breaking memoir from punk poet Eileen Myles. It’s ostensibly about their beloved dog, Rosie, but in truth, this is an exploration of creating art.
  
  
• Jami Attenberg’s latest novel, All Grown Up, is a funny and frank tale of a ‘thirty-nine-year-old single, childfree woman who defies convention as she seeks connection’.
  
  
• In One: Valuing the Single Life, Clare Payne gives insight to the once maligned and now increasingly chosen status of being single.
  
  
• Author Elizabeth Gilbert has frequently discussed her decision not to have children in interviews. While her novel, The Signature of All Things, is not about this subject directly, it is a wonderful historical novel that features a woman who remains childless as she places value on her happiness and the work she loves over societal expectations.
  
  
• Insomniac City is a moving memoir about the writer’s relationship with New York and his partner, the famous neurologist Oliver Sacks. This is a book about an intensely meaningful connection between two people.