Product Description
- 2024 SHORTLIST – THE AGE BOOK OF THE YEAR (NON-FICTION)
When Helen Hayward had her two children in London, 25 years ago, she found looking after them easy. Loving and looking after her kids was straightforward. However loving and looking after her home was not. She had long been instructed to put her career first. So she did. Yet what to do with the mushrooming laundry by the bathroom door? And what about if she actually liked cooking? Home Work is a series of personal essays motivated by three questions.
- Is there an art to running a home?
- Can it be a satisfying thing to do?
- Has the work we do around the home – which accounts for roughly a 1/4 of our waking hours – something important to teach us about life itself?
‘Helen Hayward encourages us to look with greater generosity, and newfound interest, at the domestic side of our lives – and to see in the management of a home one of the great triumphs and challenges of existence.’
Alain de Botton
After growing up in Adelaide, Helen worked in higher education in London before training as a psychotherapist there. She taught at La Trobe when she and her family first arrived in Melbourne. Currently she lives in Hobart where she mentors other writers, teaches yoga and looks after a large property. Her third book was ‘A Slow Childhood: Notes on Thoughtful Parenting’ 2017.
REVIEWS
“This memoir is a thoughtful, caring and philosophical analysis of something much bigger than our weary yanking of a vacuum cleaner through the labyrinth of our furniture. It’s about love – every sort of love… Hayward’s readable and engaging collection… is a different sort of philosophy-adjacent memoir, with a ‘self-help’ aspect that’s humble, heart-felt and honest.” B.P. MARSHALL, Tasmanian Times
“Hayward’s measured meditations on how the small tasks and telling details around the home amount to a practical philosophy of life take on a deeper poignancy.” CAMERON WOODHEAD AND FIONA CAPP, The Sydney Morning Herald
“In Home Work: Essays on Love & Housekeeping, Helen Hayward writes thoughtfully about the value we give to housekeeping and the domestic side of our lives. She explores the art of running a home and, in the context of her own life, asks where our sense of worth comes from.” BROOKE BOLAND, The Saturday Paper (paywalled)
