What is the author's tone in the book, Motherhood: A Novel?

Although the novel is driven by the narrator’s internal monologue, the narrator’s conversations with her three coins also inflect the narrator’s overarching tone. In her sessions with the coins, the narrator is free to think and speak as she likes. Indeed, she interacts with the coins as if she is interacting either with herself or someone with whom she is intimate. For example, when the coins answer yes to her question regarding whether she should embody the soul of time “rather than explain it,” she responds: “I have a headache. I’m so tired. I shouldn’t have taken that nap. But if I hadn’t taken that nap, I would be in an even worse mood than I am right now” (9, Heti’s). The narrator’s voice is both open and vulnerable. This is particularly the case when the narrator is conversing with the coins, or when she is reflecting on her recent interactions with Miles, Libby, Teresa, Erica, or others of her friends. In these ways, the author is using the first person point of view to invite the reader into her narrator’s intimate internal world as she probes her heart and mind for answers to who she is and what she wants.