Rachel Power’s The Divided Heart is a collection of interviews, in dialogue, with Australian artists who are also mothers. Interwoven is Power’s own story of the search to find expressions from other artists relating to her intense experience of trying to be both writer and young mother. The interviews explore the personal clash between two great passions, social expectations for both mothers and artists, and the gender imbalance implicit in them. They explore the creative wellspring that often comes with new birth but coincides with a radical restriction in the time available for artistic creation. The book is difficult to swallow in a gulp, as the long pages of dialogue begin to feel rather breathless, but the interviews are absorbing and the issues raised interesting. It has the potential to appeal both to mothers and to artists, as well as to educated readers interested in the particular artists themselves (Rachel Griffiths, Nikki Gemmell and Clare Bowditch, among others). However, there is some danger of readers who do not identify as artists or mothers feeling alienated from the text at times, when the depiction of both motherhood and the artistic calling verges on reverential.

Jarrah Moore works for the Global Books in Print database at Thorpe-Bowker

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