Join Sarah Moss to talk about our May Book of the Month, NIGHT WAKING, on Wed 30 May 9-10pm

[TillyBookClub]

May's Book of the Month is one of the best books on motherhood I've read for ages. Like Helen Simpson in Hey Yeah Right Get a Life, Sarah Moss is one of those authors that just nails it. This is a book you'll be passing on to everyone around you, and should win prizes for its author.

Anna Cassingham (aka Dr Bennet) is an Oxford Research Fellow writing a history book. Only she isn't, because she is also trying to cope with the incessant interruptions, questions and demands of precocious, death-obsessed, seven year old Raph and two year old Moth, who has yet to sleep through the night. Husband Giles, owner of the tiny island of Colsay where they have come to live for the summer, is keen on homemade bread and recycling, less keen on childcare and clean surfaces. Whilst planting a tree one day, the family discover a baby's skeleton, which sets Anna (and the police) on a papertrail of stories that are interlinked with the island's history and Giles's family. The dialogue is sharp and funny, the observations are lively and true to life. Above all, the tension between the visceral love for your family and the need for self-preservation is brilliantly explored.

Find out more on the book of the month page, and you can check out Sarah's website for videos, reviews and more details on the people and places that inspired the book.

Granta have given us 50 copies to give away to Mumsnetters - to claim yours go to the book of the month page and fill in your details. We'll post here when all the copies have gone. If you're not lucky enough to bag one of the free books, you can always get your paperback or Kindle version here.

We are delighted that Sarah will be joining us to chat about NIGHT WAKING, motherhood and her writing career on Wednesday 30 May, 9-10pm. Hope you can join us then...

@ProfCoxWouldGetIt

Just finished reading it this morning on the train, and I really enjoyed the book, it was great to see a working mum's struggle between being a good mum and being an individual with her own mind and career asperations - although I will admit I still don't know if it's something that is actually possible.

I can't help wonder if the slightly abrupt ending was due to a sequel being mind or if Sarah wanted to leave the story open for us to decide where is went from there.

My question to Sarah is, have you ever had moments like Anna, when you'd happily run off and leave your kids and family behind, while I believe we all love our children, it's sometimes really hard to find yourself after having children.

Thanks for a great read.

Well, the one of the good things about my job is that sometimes I can run off and leave everyone for a few days. I?ve recently returned from a work trip to US, and then I had a couple of research days in London. Of course I miss my children but I find it much easier to be pleasant company at home when I get to go other places and do other things as well.

@Bella30

Just finished my free MN copy! I really enjoyed this - I'm new to this motherhood lark, but even just a few weeks in I felt that the portrayal of Anna's situation really rang true especially the focus on mundane domestic details and how tedious it can be, plus trying to find the space to think or produce anything not child/house related. Giles drove me up the wall though - so blind to the fact that his wife just isn't coping, and her need for intellectual space as well as his. My question for Sarah would be, at what stage did you decide on the setting for the story? The isolation of life on the island seems to mirror Anna's own mental isolation - from other adults and from her academic career - was the setting a deliberate choice to reflect this?

Settings come first, for me. Places have stories and the characters and plot grow from there. I'm glad you liked it!

@juneau

Giles reminds me of my husband in his ability to a) just wander off and do whatever he wants to do without a backward glance, and b) to criticise Anna when he's left her to do everything. I agree she makes a complete hash of the housework - I COULD NOT live in such a pigsty and I don't understand her making bread when she can't manage to do far more important stuff, but I do understand the losing it momentarily and swearing. I'm ashamed to say I've done that myself on (thank God, rare), occasions. My DH had no empathy either.

Juneau, I couldn?t live like that either. But it was cathartic to write about it ? what would happen if I didn?t sweep that floor/ plan that meal/ wash that child?s hair? And I really wanted to write from the point of view of someone who was teetering on the edge of socially unacceptable parenting, because ? as this thread proves - our society is good at judging women who fail to meet certain standards and not very good at understanding how it happens.

That's interesting, that settings come first. They play a big role don't they? The setting for Cold Earth was right up there with the characters and plot too.

@valiumpoptarts

Hello Sarah, really enjoying the book but um... haven't got very far in it as 18mo DS has started waking up at 5 every day and I can't manage anything more challending than Zingzillas So my question is, do you have a thing you do that keeps you feeling human rather than just a parent/employee/writer? Or is writing and teaching and having kids enough to keep you going?!

I know I?m lucky to have a job that I love. The combination of writing and teaching and family life works very well for me, and I don?t need much else, but friends are essential and so is making something material ? cooking and especially baking will do but I love to crochet and always have something on the go, even though progress can be very slow.

Hully, yes. And they were both in some ways easy because they're isolated, contained spaces, so I could imagine them into being and get to know them completely. I'm starting to work on one set in a city now and it's a very different experience.

@libelulle

Hello Sarah,

I read this book when it came out and I've never been so simultaneously delighted and freaked out by a book. In almost every detail, Anna is me. Enough so that it would pretty much make me googlable if I wrote down the exact parallels! Quite a disconcerting read, I must say.

If you can write a sequel, that'd be supremely helpful, as I still have no idea what to do next with two small children and the ruins of an academic career.

Anyhow, I loved it. Brilliantly plotted and written! Thank you.

Thank you so much, Libelulle. I hope the book has wider appeal but I?m moved when it finds the people who know Anna?s life. Erm, write a novel? It?s a bit easier to fit around children than academic research and publishing is less sexist than academia?

@blubberguts

Simple question : what's next? (what are you working on now and when is it likely to be published?)

Thank you very much, blubberguts. I really wanted to write something that took women?s ambivalence seriously. I never expected everyone to like Anna ? she doesn?t like herself all that much either ? but I hoped that she would find readers like you.

And in response to ?what?s next?, I have a memoir about living in Iceland for a year with my family coming out at the beginning of July, Names for the Sea: Strangers in Iceland, and I?ve just started writing a sequel to Night Waking, not more about Anna and Giles but picking up the Victorian thread to develop the story of May and her family. I can imagine I might go back to Anna and Giles sometime.

@LadyDisdain

I'm half way through and trying not to gobble it up. I love the observations, the underlying humour and there are some magnificent sentences. I'm doing a great job of marketing it for you. Love the gruffalo chant, the night wakings, walking through Oxford while trying to get back to sleep. Although I do sometimes want to shout advice at Anna.

At some point in the book, Anna thinks about childless couples and wonders whether she would have children if she could go back and do it again and her answer is no. As an academic/mother, I relate to so much of the book but couldn't relate to this. Surely picking this beautiful torture again and again makes it all more torturous. I'm not sure there is a question here, except maybe: really?

A proper question: does writing about motherhood and children sideline you? Is this viewed as lesser or softer by publishers, reviewers etc?

Lady Disdain, great questions, and yes, absolutely about choosing ?beautiful torture?

Really? Well, that?s how Anna feels at the time, or thinks she feels. It?s not what I would say now, not for a moment, but I?d guess that for most of us there have been exhausted, over-wrought moments where it seems a possible answer, no?

Second question: I worried about that, and some of the early reviews made me think it might be a problem. It just seems so mad that we can?t write about this huge thing without being trivialized, that however intelligent and complicated a woman?s writing might be, the moment she ventures into family life she?s somehow gone pink and frilly. I couldn?t allow that idiocy to shape my writing in any way. Everyone has parents, after all, and most of us, nationally and certainly globally, are parents. Dickens and Freud and especially Tolstoy write quite compulsively about family life ? what is War and Peace if not a family saga? It makes me furious that male writers can write book after book about hating their parents and wanking and get prizes for ?searing insights into contemporary life? but if a woman writes about children it must be ?chick lit? (vile misogynist phrase). I could go on? Anyway, I never doubted the support of my agent and editor, the book seems to be finding readers who get it, most of the reviewers saw what I was doing and I try quite hard not care what sexists think about anything. My next novel isn?t particularly about motherhood anyway, or at least not from the mother?s end, which seems to be the part that people have real trouble taking seriously.

@southlondonlady

I loved this book - the historical thread, the present day thread, the characters - all of it - great choice Tilly!

I am someone who loved maternity leave, and find my days with my toddler mostly a lot of fun, and I think this is due in large part to having lots of support. The book really gave me an insight into what life can be like for people who don't have that support, and I felt sad for Anna because she really misses out on enjoying her kids. But, but...I felt she put an awful lot of pressure on herself in some ways too, eg couldn't Moth have had a bottle of forumla just the once when she went to the Oxford dinner?? And the bread making, oh my word. Anna just doesn't seem to value her own health / sanity at all. My question for Sarah is, do you think our modern parenting culture encourages this?

And a second quick question if that's OK - Raph and Moth are adorable, are they based on your own kids?

First one: yes, absolutely, I think one of contemporary Britain?s measures of ?good mothers? is a self-destructive level of sacrifice. Any attention to your own well-being or sanity has to be justified ? and trivialized - as ?me time? (ever noticed that men don?t have ?me time?, they just play football/ read the paper/ go for a run without having to make it part of some kind of policy). And there?s certainly a view that if you work, you?ve used up all your allocation of time away from the children and given up any right to meet your own needs, and you have to compensate for the sin of earning a living by spending all the rest of your time in intensive interaction with your children and high-performance domesticity. For high-achieving women who have often got where they are by being ambitious, driven and dependent on external validation, it?s a very damaging model. And a pretty crap model for children.

No, Raph and Moth aren?t based on my kids, though Moth is, I think, a fairly generic toddler and there were quite a lot of them around while I was writing the book.

@blubberguts

Sarah, Could you talk a little bit about Raph and his anxieties. What are they about do you think and what is the function of this theme in the book?

Well, a reader suggested to me at an event recently that Raph is the only one who speaks the truth, and I like that idea. He could be something like a Shakespearean court jester, someone who keeps saying things that everyone knows but no-one is able to deal with. The world is ending, the planet is polluted beyond hope of redemption, no-one is doing anything to remedy overwhelming global injustice, children are dying for lack of clean water and we all go on worrying about bedtime routines and preservatives in bread. As Anna acknowledges, he?s absolutely right. (I suppose this is also the answer to the thing no-one here has said about ?first world problems? ? yes, absolutely.)

@aristocat

Hello Sarah, I loved your book and I hope there is a sequel in the making for Anna because I also thought the book ended quickly.

Your thoughts and attention to detail are excellent, and everything just re-inforced how life changing children can be

Sorry I cannot be back this evening but my question was, is it writing or lecturing that gives you the most satisfaction? And why?

Thanks, aristocat! Well, I?ve been teaching in universities for eleven years. I love working with students ? less keen on the admin and politics ? I know that teaching helps with my own thinking and writing, and I generally find universities congenial and interesting places to be, but if I had to choose, I?m a writer. Because teaching can be a great joy but if I didn?t read and write and think, I wouldn?t have anything to teach.

Hi Sarah, I loved your book and I always admire authors who write honestly about motherhood, particularly aspects that are bordering on the edge of social acceptability. When you were writing the book did you worry that people might not be able to separate you as the author from the fictional character Anna, and judge you as a mother and a person? Did you feel you needed to prepare for this?

"my husband isn?t a useless twunt so I wouldn?t know!"

So you are a MNer! :)

@cakes82

I enjoyed the book and wanted to keep reading it, but I did feel it annoyed me a little bit too. I think it was as the different sections and how they joined together that the book really started to make sense to me. I did find Annas parenting style and general behaviour very irritating but then given her husbands general lack of support it wasn't really suprising. I found it very difficult to understand why moth slept so badly, although maybe Annas lack of inner calm and ability to get exactly what he wanted may not have helped. Despite my previous comments I really enjoyed second half of book!

Some children just don?t sleep, for no reason their parents can discover. It probably is all the mother?s fault ? things usually are?

Great answer, thanks :) also pleased to hear that we will find out more of May's story.

@MegnMog

Hi Sarah, I loved your book and I always admire authors who write honestly about motherhood, particularly aspects that are bordering on the edge of social acceptability. When you were writing the book did you worry that people might not be able to separate you as the author from the fictional character Anna, and judge you as a mother and a person? Did you feel you needed to prepare for this?

Yes, I worried about it, more for my kids - who didn't choose to have a mother who writes - than for me. But one of my friends said 'well, writing is a contact sport, people get hurt.' I knew it was fictional and I knew that my friends and family knew it was fictional, and beyond that, publish and be damned.

@Blatherskite

"my husband isn?t a useless twunt so I wouldn?t know!"

So you are a MNer! :)

Not these days - I'd never write anything! I was quoting a post above.

People who are not coping often behave in an irritating and annoying manner

I do hope Tilly told you that it was ME that suggested your book by the way?

So you may share in the Jeffrey love and laurels.

heh heh

@blubberguts

People who are not coping often behave in an irritating and annoying manner

Yes, exactly. I never thought everyone would like Anna. She's gone past being likeable, at least until the end.

Really? I totally over-identified liked her very much all the way through.

i get her she was (is) me

@Hullygully

I do hope Tilly told you that it was ME that suggested your book by the way?

So you may share in the Jeffrey love and laurels.

heh heh

Ah. Yes, she did, and thank you very much!

@Hullygully

Really? I totally over-identified liked her very much all the way through.

Even when she hits Moth's mattress?