Natural Disaster by Lisa Owens review – the last day of maternity leave is a comic rollercoaster

Parenting is represented in all its hilarious, moving and truthfully plodding detail, in the story of a mother and her two little boys The last day of maternity leave, and an unnamed mother of two decides to stage a “yes day”, full of treats and good feelings. Of course it does not go according to plan: the treats are deficient, misjudged and underappreciated; the good feelings are fleeting, quickly upstaged by anxiety, guilt or humiliation. This familiar-sounding scenario is the simple yet bracing premise of Lisa Owens’s second novel, following her impressive first comic fiction of female-cen

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