Peter Clenott

“Mothers. Those women with purses the size of meat trays that hold an entire deck of school portrait photos and a chequebook, make a casserole without a recipe, make the tightest bed you'll ever sleep in and only swear under extreme duress. How, how, would I go from me to that?” At twenty-four, Meg Mason was newly married to a man “essentially indistinguishable from a young Matt Damon” after landing her dream job writing for The Times in London. Nothing, she told herself, could possibly go wrong. A holiday shortage of birth control and eight months later, she was heavily pregnant and sobbing on the side of a road over trading her career for something she knew zip about. But she soldiered on. One fine Sunday, she invented motherhood by Having a Baby. On Monday, she discovered that a bunch of women had already done that, but still they couldn't tell her how to do it. Thanks to a helpful neighbour, she learned that convincing a newborn to take a bottle by letting it lick a Dorito first to “get more thirsty” didn't always work, but not what to do when your child won't sleep for roughly two years, why making friends at the park is more difficult than meeting deadlines, or how to remove your hand from a stroller—after you've Super-Glued it to the handle. Hair-raising and hilarious, Say It Again in a Nice Voice is the story of Meg’s journey from parenting novice to . . . well . . . Meg With Kids. Along the way she discovers that being a mother, however disaster-prone, might just be the only thing that she is truly irreplaceable at.