Gaining Ground by Joan Barfoot review – Anne Enright celebrates a landmark feminist novel

Half a century on, this tale of a woman who abandons her children in search of her self remains thrillingly original There is a growing literature of maternal flight: novels about women who leave not just their husbands but also the children they have made. In the real world, men are the more frequent deserters; the connection of the father to family life is seen as contingent, while motherhood is revered as an intrinsic state. This means that women who “un-mother” themselves are doing something impossible: the connection between a woman and her child is not just emotional, but also creational

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