Matrescence, the best book I’ve ever read about motherhood, is a delightfully unusual one. For starters, brief passages that lay out the machinations of nature, and many of its horrors, sit around its chapters. We meet eels that endure five life stages and multiple habitats before breeding once and then dying, and black lace-weaver mother spiders who feed their living bodies to their infants.
“Forty spiderlings, which resemble creamy yellow sea pearls, wander over her nonchalantly, devouring, snacking, nibbling, pulling bits of her flesh into their tiny mouths,” Jones writes, watching a grisly nature video. Spotting a similar spider in her children’s toy box not long after, she’s relieved to find no babies. The whole experience has felt “close to home”. “She’s safe,” she writes. “For now.”
