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Everything you need to know about parenthood but were rightly too frightened to ask about.
There are books which tell prospective parents how to bring up infants, and there are books which purport to tell actual parents how to cope with a teenager. This is a novel, set in Londonderry, which does a good job of conveying what it’s like when unplanned parenthood leads to a mid-thirties couple having to do both things at the same time. It’s a warts and all comic account, but it’s not all wart and, unusually for someone telling the story from a woman’s point of view, the device the author uses is a husband who gets things right even when his wife somewhat unilaterally realigns her life (and his) in a chaotic manner. The author presents some convincing examples of men being bastards, but her message is not “all men are bastards” and she’s courteous enough to offer a realistic depiction of one who isn’t.
Mammy Banter by Serena Terry is published in the UK by Harper Collins on the 3rd of March 2022.
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