Ten top novels about childbirth

Bethan Roberts's novels are The Pools, The Good Plain Cook, My Policeman, and Mother Island.

At the Guardian she tagged her top ten novels about childbirth, including:

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

A nightmarish vision of biological determinism, as practised by a speculative vision of a totalitarian former-USA. The Handmaid's Tale reminds us of the terrors of defining women solely by their reproductive abilities. Under Gilead's regime, our heroine Offred has no choice but to breed, and is allowed to do little else. But the lyrical flashbacks to her past also serve to offer a vision of the joys of motherhood and family life. Thus Atwood gives us the two sides of motherhood, magnified and distorted to compelling, vivid, terrifying effect.

Read about another entry on the list.

The Handmaid's Tale made Rachel Cantor's list of the ten worst jobs in books, Charlie Jane Anders and Kelly Faircloth's list of the best and worst childbirth scenes in science fiction and fantasy, Lisa Tuttle's critic's chart of the top Arthur C. Clarke Award winners, and PopCrunch's list of the sixteen best dystopian books of all time.

--Marshal Zeringue