The Mother's Tale - Camilla Noli (scary!)

[Littleover]

I saw a review for this and with 2 screaming toddlers at my feet I thought it might be something I would enjoy. To be fair the review didn't give much away and ( I can't believe I am writing this ) I thought it sounded a bit like my life. The narrator could've been me until the main story unfolds. Bizarrely though I finished it in 2 days and enjoyed it. Anyone else read it?

The bit where she is struggling with her daughter at the supermarket is my whole effing life. I have been feeling pretty crap recently and have thrown myself into reading whenever possible purely to escape the slog. I have mentioned the book and subject to some friends and it is certainly a conversation stopper. Have searched on advanced for this book on MN and nothing came up. Hope I am not going over an old subject.

Read it if you dare, I'm off to buy Buddhism for Mothers!

Sounds like a good book, will have a search for it.

I read The Mother's Tale as well - we did it in our book club a couple of weeks ago and it caused lots of lively conversation about motherhood and everything else!!!

I loved the book (haven't read anything quite like it before) and really empathised with the supermarket scene as well but the whole book was like that for me I kept feeling as if I was in her head - now that is really scary!!!

It is such a controversial subject matter that I hesitated about writing in to MN. I gave it to a mate who gave it back after the first chapter saying that she was starting to want the narrator to kill her children and get back to her happy life. I felt a combination of rebellion and resentmant while reading it and scared myself by just agreeing with her. My DH said I was in a mood for a few days after I finished it!

Camilla Noli has written another book about motherhood "Broken Fences" and I will be buying that soon.

Sounds good I'd love to read more of her work!

Do you know what it's about?

It is about a mother who is overprotective of her children. She takes a dislike to the new neighbour's daughter and the influence they are having on her safe family life. The review I read said that she realises that she can't control their lifestyle/attitudes and this makes her all the more frantic and nervous. This makes the children do the opposite of what she asks and an incident occurs. I loved the narrator in the Mother's Tale and how chilling she was so I'll be interested to see how she writes as a neurotic personality. I could've defended the last character, I wonder if I will with this book. I will order it tonight and soak it up in 2 days like the last one.

Just tried to get it, not released in the UK, Australia only. Bugger!

I have just finished this book in 2 hours.
I know some women suffers from post-natal depression, etc. I for one had no support for my DD but I find this book really disturbing. This mom is just evil and twisted... end off.

Ive added this to my wish list

it's on Amazon Littleover here

oh sorry, you meant her other one [embarrassed]

I saw this in the library and looking at the cover I wouldn't have picked it up before reading about it on here

I am still about it, read it in a few hours

is this too hardcore to read when 9 months pregnant, am almost scared!

Actually, I read it when 6 months pregnant, and was fine with it - in fact I empathised more with it then. Now I have a daughter exactly the same age as the daughter in the book. I got the book down to lend to a friend the other day and was flicking through it and it made me feel quite chilled. It's gripping stuff, though.

Broken Fences is coming out here at the end of the year (next year in paperback). I've read an advance copy and it's equally page-turning and disturbing.