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The Mother Is Restless and She Doesn't Know Why: Finding Freedom in the Cage
Crackling with intelligence and wit, a critical memoir about how nihilism might just get you through.
‘Here is how I I read Nietzsche. I read Nietzsche in bed, with a chest cold. I highlight things in green and draw exclamation marks in the margins. I text friends. You wouldn’t expect I could be having so much fun reading Nietzsche, I tell them. They are worried about their children, about lockdown, about money, about their marriages. I am reading Nietzsche, I repeat. I text them quotes from Nietzsche. They do not reply.’
Gemma Parker’s parents were impulsively itinerant, and her literary heroes were utterly committed to following their muse, dashing into foreign lands and up mountainsides. To write properly about nihilism, she herself surely needs to go to Paris! But she’s stuck – by a job, by children, then by Covid.
Nietzsche says that to be worth anything at all, art – and life – needs to break all rules and work itself out from scratch. As Parker reads the great philosopher’s work more deeply – and that of other celebrated nihilists Camus and Beckett – she gradually discovers a way of being free, even at home.
Both witty and wise, funny and profound, The Mother Is Restless opens up fresh ways of thinking about life, for fans of Rachel Cusk, Maggie Nelson and Olivia Laing.
‘Here is how I I read Nietzsche. I read Nietzsche in bed, with a chest cold. I highlight things in green and draw exclamation marks in the margins. I text friends. You wouldn’t expect I could be having so much fun reading Nietzsche, I tell them. They are worried about their children, about lockdown, about money, about their marriages. I am reading Nietzsche, I repeat. I text them quotes from Nietzsche. They do not reply.’
Gemma Parker’s parents were impulsively itinerant, and her literary heroes were utterly committed to following their muse, dashing into foreign lands and up mountainsides. To write properly about nihilism, she herself surely needs to go to Paris! But she’s stuck – by a job, by children, then by Covid.
Nietzsche says that to be worth anything at all, art – and life – needs to break all rules and work itself out from scratch. As Parker reads the great philosopher’s work more deeply – and that of other celebrated nihilists Camus and Beckett – she gradually discovers a way of being free, even at home.
Both witty and wise, funny and profound, The Mother Is Restless opens up fresh ways of thinking about life, for fans of Rachel Cusk, Maggie Nelson and Olivia Laing.
- GenresNonfictionPhilosophy
272 pages, Kindle Edition
Published January 28, 2026
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
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February 24, 2026Gemma Parker is a gorgeous writer and if nihilism is your thing then you are going to love this work of non-fiction. I struggled with the first 50 pages because there was just SO MUCH Nietzsche but then Parker brought in Samuel Beckett and Camus and I was in. If nothing has meaning, how should we live? It’s quite possibly my favourite question and Parker approaches it in many different ways. The second half of the book is strongest as it delves into second languages, travel, mundanity and so much more. This is a lockdown book of big ideas and domestic life. It’s so exciting to discover an Australian Olivia Laing type.
March 26, 2026
I’m a huge sucker for vignette-style memoir writing from women, particularly when it’s this beautiful and existential. If you seem to have been born bone-achingly restless like me you’ll appreciate the representation. Lost me in moments, but that’s to be expected.
April 23, 2026
I tend to shirk from the restless mother in writing, perhaps out of fear for what could've been had i found myself with a baby thrust in my arms against my will or perhaps for fear the restless mother is still the same restlessness I grapple with just with a slightly different flavour. Essentially a collection of quotes the author identifies with in different periods of her life. Things that stuck with me:
FERNWEH
"Fernweh is the German word that means a longing for far-off places, in particular those we do not know or have yet to experience. A longing for an unknown place, a yearning for elsewhere. Farsickness. In English sometimes we borrow the other German word for wanting to travel, wanderlust, The difference between wanderlust and Fernwe, is that one expresses desire and the other gives voice to ache. One speaks of want, the other of lack
Fern means far and wehe means woe, pain, or misery. Longing as a wound, an illness. an inexplicable and violent abyss. Its opposite is heimweh, homesickness. Portuguese has a word, saudade, which translates roughly as the presence of absence, and it hinges on the same pain: the consciousness of lack, the inadequacy of now. I was born with Fernweh, the desire to leave. Is it genetic, or is it just an origin myth - a pourquoi story"
BLOOD
There is no viable synthetic substitute for blood, or plasma, which means it has been harvested in poorer countries like Haiti to supply wealthier nations like the United States with the necessary quotas for transfusions. Blood has become another tool in the neoliberal catastrophe. I cannot quite reconcile this with my search, and it haunts me: bleeding the life out of the disenfranchised and disempowered to supply literal life and vitality to the wealthier, luckier, more powerful. Is this, then, the meaning of blood that which sustains life, that which is not our own, but tradeable, exchangeable, that which can be stolen? Is it blood that is the chaos at the heart of the polis?
Accepting the potential that you are misunderstanding Nietzsche is of course, just part of the fun. For some reason his accusation of poor readership reminds me of what I have been told is an old Hungarian expression: for a man with only a hammer in his toolbox, every problem looks like a nail. For a woman with only Nietzsche in her toolbox, does every problem look like nihilism?
As the weeks passed the garden ran wild and I developed a sickening awareness of the privilege of all my ruptures, all my fleeing I did not want to move: I felt resistant and mulish. I realised with unpleasant clarity that I was not really into Nietzschean nihilism, revaluation, and destruction of the status quo if someone else Was doing the destroying, if someone else was holding the famethrower.
Does it matter how the conditions of nihilism are established - whether you put your shoulder to the plough, as Nietzsche puts it? Is the only thing that matters what you do after the rupture - the courage and commitment that you bring to the revaluation of all values? It feels pretty disgusting to have your life annihilated. I want to say that Nietzsche does not belong to the world of those made homeless, those whose worlds are razed for them, but he is a passionate advocate of the necessity of pain and suffering:
"To those human beings who are of any concern to me I wish suffering, desolation, sickness, ill-treatment, indignities - I wish that they should not remain unfamiliar with profound self-contempt, the torture of self-mistrust, the wretchedness of the vanquished: I have no pity for them, because I wish them the only thing that can prove today whether one is worth anything or not - that one endures."
FERNWEH
"Fernweh is the German word that means a longing for far-off places, in particular those we do not know or have yet to experience. A longing for an unknown place, a yearning for elsewhere. Farsickness. In English sometimes we borrow the other German word for wanting to travel, wanderlust, The difference between wanderlust and Fernwe, is that one expresses desire and the other gives voice to ache. One speaks of want, the other of lack
Fern means far and wehe means woe, pain, or misery. Longing as a wound, an illness. an inexplicable and violent abyss. Its opposite is heimweh, homesickness. Portuguese has a word, saudade, which translates roughly as the presence of absence, and it hinges on the same pain: the consciousness of lack, the inadequacy of now. I was born with Fernweh, the desire to leave. Is it genetic, or is it just an origin myth - a pourquoi story"
BLOOD
There is no viable synthetic substitute for blood, or plasma, which means it has been harvested in poorer countries like Haiti to supply wealthier nations like the United States with the necessary quotas for transfusions. Blood has become another tool in the neoliberal catastrophe. I cannot quite reconcile this with my search, and it haunts me: bleeding the life out of the disenfranchised and disempowered to supply literal life and vitality to the wealthier, luckier, more powerful. Is this, then, the meaning of blood that which sustains life, that which is not our own, but tradeable, exchangeable, that which can be stolen? Is it blood that is the chaos at the heart of the polis?
Accepting the potential that you are misunderstanding Nietzsche is of course, just part of the fun. For some reason his accusation of poor readership reminds me of what I have been told is an old Hungarian expression: for a man with only a hammer in his toolbox, every problem looks like a nail. For a woman with only Nietzsche in her toolbox, does every problem look like nihilism?
As the weeks passed the garden ran wild and I developed a sickening awareness of the privilege of all my ruptures, all my fleeing I did not want to move: I felt resistant and mulish. I realised with unpleasant clarity that I was not really into Nietzschean nihilism, revaluation, and destruction of the status quo if someone else Was doing the destroying, if someone else was holding the famethrower.
Does it matter how the conditions of nihilism are established - whether you put your shoulder to the plough, as Nietzsche puts it? Is the only thing that matters what you do after the rupture - the courage and commitment that you bring to the revaluation of all values? It feels pretty disgusting to have your life annihilated. I want to say that Nietzsche does not belong to the world of those made homeless, those whose worlds are razed for them, but he is a passionate advocate of the necessity of pain and suffering:
"To those human beings who are of any concern to me I wish suffering, desolation, sickness, ill-treatment, indignities - I wish that they should not remain unfamiliar with profound self-contempt, the torture of self-mistrust, the wretchedness of the vanquished: I have no pity for them, because I wish them the only thing that can prove today whether one is worth anything or not - that one endures."
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April 15, 2026I struggled with the first chapters but then the pace increased and I fell in love with this book. Through my own laziness I've never really managed to get my head around Nietzsche's philosophy. But Gemma Parker--in working through her own journey of discovery, a journey that includes Camus, Beckett, etc.--makes it not only understandable but satisfyingly relevant to our times. As a writer of memoir I really enjoyed the interwoven memoir strand including her musings on her relationship with the French language (she has a French speaking husband and children), on learning and reading books in French, on moving between languages (for this she draws quite a deal on Lahiri). I found this book quite inspirational for my own writing, and it's one to which I'll be returning, also this author.
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May 7, 2026Firstly, what a great title for a book. Gemma Parker shows her unique voice in this memoir of sorts that hums with vignettes and observations of a woman through life. Think of Helen Garner’s diaries but with a unique blend of nihilism and all its dark humour. With moments of deep and profound observations, and breathless sentences of a restless person who is constantly searching for meaning, The Mother is Restless and She Doesn’t Know Why is a title that encapsulates the very essence of this book.
April 7, 2026
This is my favourite genre but this book just didn’t work for me. I think the threads were a little too tangential and obtuse and while the form was okay, it felt a little unhinged and incoherent. I enjoyed it in some parts, but less so than I expected.
February 17, 2026
I love this style of book and I liked the personal narration. Just so much Nietzsche and so many quotes. I might buy the brush though.
April 25, 2026
This novel mistakes monotony for depth.
Despite its ambitions, it offered little in the way of plot, insight, or engagement.
Despite its ambitions, it offered little in the way of plot, insight, or engagement.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews