Little Disasters by Sarah Vaughan
Genre: Contemporary fiction, Domestic drama
Read: 21st September 2020
Published: 2nd April 2020
★★★★ 4 stars
DESCRIPTION:
You think you know her…
But look a little closer
She is a stay-at-home mother of three with boundless reserves of patience, energy and love. After being friends for a decade, this is how Liz sees Jess.
Then one moment changes everything.
Dark thoughts and carefully guarded secrets surface – and Liz is left questioning everything she thought she knew about her friend, and about herself.
From the bestselling author of Anatomy of a Scandal – a new thought-provoking novel exploring the complexity of motherhood and all that connects and disconnects us.
MY REVIEW:
Never before has a book opened my eyes into the world of motherhood - its trials, its hardships and its bone weary exhausting challenges of pure chaos - than LITTLE DISASTERS by Sarah Vaughan. It's not really a mystery or a thriller...but rather a thought-provoking and compelling analysis of predominantly two women's lives, and that of their children. It falls more into contemporary fiction and maybe a little domestic suspense, questioning a woman's natural maternal instinct, her endurance through sleep deprivation whilst providing love and care for her child despite being plagued with feelings of not being good enough.
The story opens with a confronting prologue. A mother trying to soothe her 11 week old baby who refuses to settle. The pleading with the child to stop, the crying that intensifies, the overwhelming feeling of being so incredibly alone day after day and night after night of non-stop crying. Why won't she stop? Why won't she stop? WHY WON't SHE JUST STOP? It is hard hitting and confronting as the reader is left to wonder just what the mother does.
January 2018: Late one evening just as her shift is about to end, hospital paediatrician Liz Trenchard is called to A&E to take a look at a child that has presented with some puzzling symptoms. Walking into the cubicle, Liz is surprised to find her close friend Jess Curtis with her ten month old daughter Betsey sitting there. It seems Betsey has not been too well this evening and after her husband found her in her cot covered in vomit, he urged Jess to bring her in as a matter of caution. Liz examines Betsey and is shocked to discover a soft depressed area of her skull that is tender to the touch, prompting the child to scream. And so after the necessary scans, Liz diagnoses Betsey with a skull fracture. Jess is horrified.
Questions begin to rise immediately as to how Betsey was injured and as Liz questions her, Jess closes herself off and her answers become vague. Liz has no alternative but to report the incident to social services who then alert the police.
But Liz knows Jess, surely. She would never hurt her own child...or any child for that matter. She has always been a cautious mother, even over protective at times, alert to anything and everything that could harm her child. Liz knows Jess is a good mother. But, due to the demanding nature of her profession, Liz hasn't been as present in the past several months since Betsey's birth - who knows how Jess is coping?
The women met in ante-natal classes ten years ago when they were pregnant with their oldest children and along with two other mothers, Mel and Charlotte, have remained friends throughout. They have regular get togethers talking about their children and their milestones as well as socialising together with their respective husbands. But Jess went on to have a third child, where the other women had just two...except Charlotte, who only had the one, and even that was with great difficulty. The women saw each other at the school gates but didn't seem to find the time to check in with each other as much as they used to.
And now, with Betsey in paediatrics ICU and Jess' story about Bets pulling herself up on the fridge and then falling...just doesn't add up. Liz is sure that Jess is hiding something. So what isn't she telling them? She wants to be there for her friend but she also knows that she can't discuss Betsey's case with her...making it especially difficult.
To make matters worse, Jess' private battle is exacerbated by her husband's previous friendship with Charlotte, whom he knew at university. She doesn't believe Ed would be unfaithful to her but Charlotte does have an air about her that speaks volumes...insinuating that their friendship was something more. Should she be worried? But she doesn't have time to worry. Not with the police investigating her for child neglect and possibly injuring her baby girl. Not with all these thoughts racing through her head and her incessant need to ensure her children's safety with the aligning of her rings. One. Two. Three.
Despite her desire to help her friend, Liz knows she must also maintain a professional distance...which isn't helped by her worries for her mother who appears mentally unbalanced as well as drinking herself into oblivion each day. When her mother is rushed to hospital and diagnosed as terminally ill, Liz is confronted with the horrors of her past and old memories begin to resurface. And then on her deathbed, her mother confesses to something so horrific...
How can Liz correlate what her mother has told her with the current circumstances her closest friend now finds herself in? How can she find compassion for a mother that was habitually cruel and abusive towards her and her brother throughout their lives? And how can what has happened to Jess and baby Betsey ever be mended?
But the truth is far closer than anyone thinks. And when Liz uncovers what really happened, there is a collective sigh of relief all round. But is that truly the end of it?
A compelling and emotional story, LITTLE DISASTERS is slow burning but in encapsulates you from very early on that you are invested in what happens from the very beginning. The multiple narratives are cleverly woven together between the past and the present - mainly between Liz, Jess and Ed with the addition of a couple of others throughout that provide their own version of events.
A complex tale about one of the most difficult jobs in the world, LITTLE DISASTERS also highlights the realities of post natal depression and anxiety. A woman's body goes through a multitude of changes throughout pregnancy, giving birth and then thrust into motherhood without an instruction manual, despite having done it twice before. Every pregnancy is different, every birth is different and every baby is different. A woman's mental health is tested to the limits throughout all these changes and sometimes it just becomes too much. It doesn't make them weak or inferior or a bad mother. Hormonal imbalances create a wealth of problems for one's mental health and pregnancy and motherhood is probably one of the biggest challenges of them all. So with my own experience with mental health, I am sure this book provides an accurate and realistic depiction of post natal depression an anxiety.
I am not a mother and yet this book makes me, in some ways, grateful that I am not. I'm not even maternal...unless it has four legs, a tail and goes woof. I was told by my specialist many years ago that I would find motherhood incredibly difficult due to my underlying medical conditions, one of which is my mental health. And in reading Jess' plight in this book I could really identify with her despite not being a mother myself. Those frightening thoughts, that incessant feeling of exhaustion, the never ending cries, the uncontrollable tears, the isolation and the overwhelming feeling of not being good enough...all entwined with her feeling of being out of control. I've no doubt that motherhood is hard...and this book really highlights its difficulties whilst trying to balance everything and find some normality again.
The twist, when it comes, is fairly expected. I'd long since figured out the several twists purely because this isn't a mystery or thriller and if you look hard enough you will see them too. While they are foreseeable, they are still shocking and ultimately still a satisfying end.
Overall, LITTLE DISASTERS is a thought-provoking read that is realistic and heartwrenching at times. Anyone who is a mother will surely recognise the emotions in all its overwhelming glory and quickly identify with Jess and her story.
I do thoroughly recommend this book. It is an eye opening look into the world of post natal depression and anxiety in the form of a thrilling page turning contemporary domestic drama.
I would like to thank #SarahVaughan, #NetGalley and #SimonAndSchusterUK for an ARC of #LittleDisasters in exchange for an honest review.
MEET THE AUTHOR:
Sarah Vaughan read English at Oxford and went on to become a journalist. She spent eleven years at the Guardian as a news reporter, health correspondent, and political correspondent. She left to freelance and began writing fiction the week she turned forty.
Her third novel, Anatomy of a Scandal, was an instant international bestseller, a Sunday Times top five bestseller, a kindle number 1 bestseller, a Richard & Judy pick, and was longlisted for the Theakson's Old Peculier Crime Novel and shortlisted for awards in France, Sweden and the UK. It has been translated into 22 languages and is being adapted for TV. Her fourth novel, Little Disasters, will be published in France, Spain, Portugal, Sweden, the UK on 2nd April and the US on 18th August.
Sarah lives just outside Cambridge with my husband, two children, geriatric cat and puppy. When not writing, she loves to walk, run, read.
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