My life seemed to be a vacuum of desperate nothingness. Surely
there must be a reason why I was […] married to a man who was my
enemy most of the time, and the mother of children I merely
tolerated. And Brendan, yes Brendan. What was he to me? A lover? An
ally? Or simply a distraction […]? I must break free, I thought,
panicking.
(Owens, 1994, p. 82)
Agnes Owens’s novella, A Working Mother, was first published in hardback by Bloomsbury Publishing in 1994. In 1995, it was republished in softcover by Abacus. Both editions of the novella feature cover art by Owens’s close friend and collaborator, Alasdair Gray. Gray produced the cover art for many of Owens’s texts, including Gentlemen of the West (1984) and People Like That (1996). The cover of A Working Mother depicts Betty, the
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1999 words
Citation: MacDonald, Laura. "A Working Mother". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 24 February 2025 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=41635, accessed 29 March 2025.]
