‘Unexpected, intellectually rigorous, funny, beautiful; a profoundly talented writer’ Claire Dederer, author of Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma
At Amanda Hess’s seven-month scan, the doctor analysing the ultrasound saw something he ‘didn’t like’ – a potentially serious abnormality in her baby. Telling the moving story of this moment and everything that happened afterwards, Amanda Hess explores how it feels to become a parent in a culture in which everything is mediated by the internet and technology, in which the click of a mouse can conjure infinite information at any time – along with infinite opinions, suggestions and judgements.
Exploring the outer reaches of different approaches to parenthood – from genetic testing and the pursuit of ‘a normal baby’ to freebirthers’ refusal of any medical care or intervention into pregnancy – she explores compelling questions about how technology is changing culture, our relationships and our most fundamental human experiences. At the heart of the book is her own deeply emotional story – told in brilliantly stylish prose, alive with sharp insight and wry humour.
At Amanda Hess’s seven-month scan, the doctor analysing the ultrasound saw something he ‘didn’t like’ – a potentially serious abnormality in her baby. Telling the moving story of this moment and everything that happened afterwards, Amanda Hess explores how it feels to become a parent in a culture in which everything is mediated by the internet and technology, in which the click of a mouse can conjure infinite information at any time – along with infinite opinions, suggestions and judgements.
Exploring the outer reaches of different approaches to parenthood – from genetic testing and the pursuit of ‘a normal baby’ to freebirthers’ refusal of any medical care or intervention into pregnancy – she explores compelling questions about how technology is changing culture, our relationships and our most fundamental human experiences. At the heart of the book is her own deeply emotional story – told in brilliantly stylish prose, alive with sharp insight and wry humour.
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Reviews
There is no better writer than Amanda Hess to dissect the joys, fears, and humiliations that accompany having children in the information age, and no wittier chaperone through the strange world of surveillance, monetization, bureaucracy, and alternative medicine to which pregnant people and mothers are subjected. Second Life is a sharp, moving, sometimes harrowing, and always funny companion to some of the best and worst things life has to offer
Finally a book about parenthood that acknowledges that the internet is the first place we go to navigate pregnancy. Hess doesn't demonize or valorize it but rather serves as a smart - and very funny - guide to the good, the bad, and the truly weird of how we give birth today
Second Life is a tender, perceptive account of pregnancy and early motherhood - and a stylish confrontation with the demented landscape of digital parenting content. It also happens to be a subtle indictment of a healthcare system that leaves some parents scrolling for alternatives. Hess is a smart, savvy, and generous guide
Second Life is indispensable ... frank, funny, searingly smart. A must read for anyone who has ever wondered what it means to parent in the digital age and an essential antidote for the information-overload they'll certainly be met with on the internet
New parents spend countless hours staring at our phones, scrolling for the comfort American systems fail to provide us. But pushed to the brink, only Amanda Hess could step through the blue light looking glass - journey through her specific, and our collective, anxiety, dissociation, data points, targeted ads, and apps - and emerge a more sensate, embodied, and sharper critic. The honesty of Second Life takes my breath away
The story of a crisis-born odyssey, Second Life charts a new mother's descent into and re-emergence from the internet's 'pregnant underworld' with clarity, rigor, and tremendous wit. That such a deft a vivisector of our digital age should find herself lost in its churn of data-brokerage, commerce, and myth is a reminder of what we're all up against, and an engine of Amanda Hess's bracing and eloquent memoir