Book excerpt: When classical pianist Anna Goldsworthy falls pregnant with her first child, she is both excited and anxious about what lies ahead. Should she indulge her craving for sausage after sixteen years without meat? Will her birth plan involve Enya or hypnosis, or neither? And just how worried should she be about her baby falling into a composting toilet? This delightful memoir reveals the love that binds families together. Welcome to Your New Life captures the shock of leaving behind the life that you know and the thrill of starting the great adventure that is parenthood. ‘This book does what great literature should: it tries to get a grip on life – the making of it, the living-and-loving it, the leaving it. Goldsworthy’s writing is so beautiful, so laser- acute and funny and moving that you feel you are living more vividly. Welcome to Your New Life seems essential to me now. I laughed and I cried and I absolutely loved it.’ —Anna Funder ‘Warm, funny and candid.’ —Books+Publishing ‘A keen-eyed, funny, tender, wonderful book.’ —Chloe Hooper ‘ ... there are few books that have made me howl with laughter as this one has ... she has an exquisite ability to recast the banal into another sphere ... a deliciously subversive read.’ —Melbourne Review