'Maybe Baby' by Emma Neale (Bateman Books, 2026) Out Now!

By Bateman Books | Posted: Thursday Apr 23, 2026

Maybe Baby is a touching, funny and thought-provoking love story with a glimmer of the speculative.

‘Maybe Baby is my favourite Emma Neale novel to date; she makes me believe, think and care deeply about her moving, provocative and incredible premise.’ — Harriet Allan

‘Witty and poignant, Maybe Baby asks how far we’ll go to honour the past and shape the future.’ — Catherine Chidgey

Nate, a grieving widower, is determined to honour his late wife Kelly, and find a way to have the child they were desperate to create together.

After exploring various possibilities, which all fail, he is compelled to try something radical: he leaves his Dunedin home to take part in a groundbreaking medical trial in London. En route, he meets Sadie, an independent, intelligent, self-sufficient woman and finds himself irresistibly attracted to her.

Nate feels himself pulled in different directions, with the complex hinge of three powerful desires: his loyalty to Kelly; the primal urge to be a father; and his overwhelming desire for Sadie, who has her own reasons to resist starting a family.

Moving between New Zealand and a vividly portrayed London, Maybe Baby confronts the nature of heartache, and, with a lightly satirical touch, also explores the general assumptions many people still make about gender and parenthood.

Emma Neale says, ‘One of the most basic of those assumptions is that it is usually women who feel the biological imperative and women who drive the decision to start a family. In many heterosexual couples — and Nate and Kelly are one such couple — the quiet yearning for family might be more deeply harboured by the man. Perhaps personality is a strong, if not a stronger, influence than biological sex and gender on our destinies and the choices we make about who to be with, what roles we play, and how to lead our lives.’

‘I wrote this book as a way to explore a broader, more nuanced, more layered definition of gender than we might be used to seeing in popular representations of parenthood; a way to honour the tender and nurturing side of many of the men I have met and know in my own life; a way to add richness, texture and complexity to our view of the definitions of masculinity and femininity, but most of all, I wrote this to tell the story of one specific man, who wrestles with a particular inner drive that compels him to take risks: risks as serious as those posed by any thirst for career, money, power or adventure.’

Emma Neale is the author of seven novels, seven collections of poetry, and a collection of short stories. A former editor of Landfall, Emma has received several literary fellowships, residencies and awards, including the Lauris Edmond Memorial Award for a Distinguished Contribution to New Zealand Poetry 2020 and the Janet Frame Prize 2025. Her seventh poetry collection, Liar, Liar, Lick, Spit (Dunedin: Otago University Press, 2024) won the Mary and Peter Biggs Poetry Prize at the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards.

Purchase here: Maybe Baby by Emma Neale - Bateman Books