Top ten books on motherhood

Eleanor Birne works as an editor and has written reviews for various publications. She lives in London with her husband and son. Her first book is When Will I Sleep Through the Night?.

At the Guardian she named a top ten list of books on motherhood.

One title on the list:

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (1873-77)

Anna Karenina is a complicated, ambiguous mother. She cares deeply about her young son, Seryozha, but feels that her life has only properly begun when she meets the glamorous Count Vronsky. She leaves her passionless marriage and therefore her son in order to be with Vronsky, but misses Seryozha desperately. There is a moving scene when she returns to her son's bedside on his birthday after a long absence. She has a daughter by Vronsky but can't feel the same way about the baby as she does about Seryozha. Things, famously, don't end well for her.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Anna Karenina also appears on Esther Freud's list top ten list of love stories, Elizabeth Kostova's list of favorite books, James Gray's list of best books, Marie Arana's list of the best books about love, Ha Jin's most important books list, Tom Perrotta's ten favorite books list, Claire Messud's list of her five most important books, Alexander McCall Smith's list of his five most important books, Mohsin Hamid's list of his ten favorite books, Louis Begley's list of favorite novels about cheating lovers, and among the top ten works of literature according to Peter Carey and Norman Mailer. John Mullan put it on his lists of ten of the best births in literature, ten of the best ice-skating episodes in literature, and ten of the best balls in literature.

--Marshal Zeringue