The Lost Season

“Brutally honest and eloquently crafted.”
—Publishers Weekly

“Part of what makes Fowles’s writing so stellar is that she never shies away from scrutinizing her own thoughts and beliefs…Fowles is really good at her craft.”
—Quill & Quire, Starred Review

“The Lost Season is a fresh new take on motherhood.”
—She Does The City

“Fowles returns with the honesty, humour, and heart that readers love in a memoir.”
—49th Shelf

“[Fowles is] a particularly gifted raconteur. . . . Part of what makes [her] writing so stellar is that she never shies away from scrutinizing her own thoughts and beliefs. . . . Another strength is [her] generosity in sharing painful personal details, many of which will resonate with women who are going through isolating experiences like infertility and postpartum anxiety. Mostly, though, The Lost Season succeeds as a book because Fowles is really good at her craft. . . . In one of the final chapters, Fowles describes finding the beauty in living ‘a small, good life,’ one that differs from the life her rapaciously ambitious workaholic former self had thought she wanted. Her sentiments are no doubt correct, but this book proves that her aspirations to greatness were too.”
—Quill & Quire, starred review

“In The Lost Season, formidable author Stacey May Fowles births a better version of herself after birthing another human. This triumph of a memoir had my undivided attention from page one as she recounted her arduous journey to the junction of motherhood, mental health struggles and toxic work culture. From weaving together body memories of harm with the invasiveness of labour and delivery, to coupling her child’s first tentative steps with the act of reclaiming the writer within, Fowles had me enthralled to the very last word.”
—Catherine Hernandez, writer and screenwriter of Scarborough the book and film

“The Lost Season is a poignant and important book by a writer at the height of her powers. Stacey May Fowles turns an unflinching gaze at the ways in which new motherhood impacts every aspect of her being, and, in doing so, creates something meaningful and beautiful.”
—Alison Pick, author of Far to Go

“The Lost Season is a jewel of a book. Stacey May Fowles beautifully excavates her own life to write about the spectrum of motherhood and its accompanying deep pains and exhilarating joys that can emerge in the most innocuous of places and situations. The Lost Season is honest, disarming, and precise, and gives us all permission to be exactly who we are: anxious, hopeful, and perfectly broken.”
—Jen Sookfong Lee, author of Superfan

“A fierce, honest, and urgent memoir about a woman’s journey from infertility to motherhood, with its arising breadth of contradictory emotions and challenges. If you’re looking for a shiny, glossy fairy-tale, this isn’t it. The Lost Season is unflinching in its takedown of every judgement, reductive assumption, and oppressive role ascribed to women and mothers by the system while also acknowledging how easy it is to internalize them. Fowles’ memoir is incredibly personal, delving without judgement into grief, trauma, anxiety, expectations, desire, but also hope, love, and small victories. The Lost Season is the book I wish I read before becoming a mother.”
—Sofia Mostaghimi, author of Desperada

“The Lost Season is a compelling memoir on Fowles’ arduous path of healing and recovery from the sometimes-crippling effects of anxiety, PTSD, infertility and complications after a long wished-for pregnancy. Motherhood turns out to be no pastel-toned panacea. She is vulnerable and relatable in her honesty and evocatively describes the contradiction of embracing and resenting motherhood, and the changes and sacrifices it demands. Fowles bravely gives permission to women who, however much they long to be mothers, struggle with losing parts of themselves in the process. She discovers the potent if counter-intuitive tonic of loosening her grip on a professional life she never wholly believed in.”
—Pauline Dakin, author of Run, Hide, Repeat

“[A]n invitation to an ongoing conversation—rich, thoughtful, generous, questioning, kind. There were many times, as I was reading this wonderful book, that I wanted to reply with a heartfelt, “Yes! And!” For folks at any stage of being mothers / not-mothers, this book will provide sustenance, nourishment, healing. It’s also beautifully written and crafted.”
—Carrie Snyder, author of Francie’s Got a Gun

“An unflinching, beautifully crafted collection of essays on infertility, motherhood, and the unseen labour expected of women. Stacey May Fowles captures the contradictions that so many mothers carry—the tension between longing and arrival, love and exhaustion, fulfillment and guilt after finally getting what was wanted for so long. Tender yet fierce, Stacey’s prose offers rare permission to live inside the both/and.”
—Anna Julia Stainsby, author of The Afterpains

“In The Lost Season, Stacey May Fowles unveils the hardest, sharpest moments of new motherhood— not just the often-ignored serious physical recovery, but the grief: the loss of one’s own self that is required in order to bring someone new into the world, and, I think, most compellingly, the deep loneliness that goes along with that. You have a new baby and a whole new level and way to experience love, but it feels like you lose everything else, even your relationship with your own self. Fowles tells her story honestly, and it is heartbreaking and beautiful and true and universal, all at once. The Lost Season is a memoir that shines a light on women’s lives in the moment we are most likely to not be seen at all; a story that starts with resilience, and ends with reinvention.”
—Elisabeth de Mariaffi, author of The Retreat