I had the same feeling reading this as I did Kate Atkinson’s Behind the Scenes at the Museum. It is very special. Related in the different voices of the three generations of women living together through one momentous year, it has a north country lilt and an infectious style that really captures the period, for although we only travel a contemporary year, in reflection and flashbacks we travel some three-quarters of a century. Life, circumstances, attitudes and issues change but the spirit of family remains across the generations. I cannot praise it highly enough.
The Bad Mother's Handbook is the story of a year in the lives of Charlotte, Karen, and Nan, none of whom can quite believe how things have turned out. Why is it all so difficult? Why do the most ridiculous mistakes have the most disastrous consequences? When are you too old to throw up in a flowerbed after too much vodka? When are you too young to be a mother? Both hilarious and wise, it is a clear-eyed look at motherhood - and childhood - in its many guises, from the moment the condom breaks to the moment you file for divorce or, more optimistically, from the moment you hear your baby's first cry to the moment you realize that there are as many sorts of mother as there are children, and that love sometimes is the most important thing of all.
'Buy it. Chock-full of Northern charm' - Daily Mirror
'A really cracking read' - India Knight, Sunday Times
'Extremely enjoyable: funny, perceptive and cleverly told' - Guardian
Author
About Kate Long
A former teacher, Kate Long born in 1964 grew up in Blackrod, Lancashire. She wrote her first novel, The Bad Mother's Handbook, after her children had gone to bed and "if there was nothing good on the telly." She currently lives with her husband and two young children in the small village in Shropshire.
