Overview:
Title: Female Life on Planet Earth
Author: Laleh Khadivi
Published: September 2026
Genre: Literary
Themes: Motherhood, Identity
One sentence summary: A story of motherhood and identity that asks the question, did you really know your mother?
One sentence review: A delicate and beautiful short novel that is well worth your time.
Review:
After her mother’s death and suspect packages turn up at her house, Heti’s earth falls beneath her feet on discovering her mother is not who she thought.
It’s a relatively short read and I’d recommend going in blind and not even reading the blurb for full immersion into this story. And maybe this already is too many spoilers?
This book felt like a quiet friend that you can sit with in silence, there was a lot to absorb on page and off and often found myself putting the book down to just sit and feel. It felt like quite a special book in that aspect.
But with saying that, I’m not quite sure how to review it, or maybe I’m just out of practice. So I’ll leave you some quotes that made me pause and think.
“Who are we to speak of loneliness, who are we to talk of isolation, when we each one a mother to call us into this life and a child to carry us out?”
“It’s a little scary isn’t it, inheritance? That we don’t get to choose what we inherit.
Or what we pass on.”
“I don’t think you can ever really know a woman completely, they change so much.”
“For women, the needle skips. We are repetitions within repetitions, with infinite variations, some in our single lifetime, some in the lifetimes before or beyond. We change, and change again, to jump the slip, to survive.”
If you’d like to get yourself a copy, you can support local bookshops and my work while doing so on Bookshop.org with this link here and on libro.fm here.
If you like what you’ve read and would like to access more content, we have a cosy reading community over on patreon . If you love a bookish giveaway and learning about all the new releases, we’d love to have you with us. It’s perfect for those looking for community and connection in the online space. You can also find more content on my Instagram here.
And don’t forget to check out my other blogs and reviews – you can find books with similar themes in the same folder link below, or click back onto blogs to see the whole offering.
Last updated 16/10/2026
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