Review of 'Natural Disaster' - Lisa Owens

I think any mother who has ever had to go back to work after maternity leave will immediately grasp what is at the heart of this book. We are told that we must cherish every moment, because they fly past so quickly. And yes, they do. Except when they don't. And really, who genuinely cherishes the fifty million daily questions and the lack pf privacy when you need a wee?

The narrator wants to create a perfect day with her two young children before she has to go back to work, and as a mother who felt a similar urge before my youngest went to pre-school, I completely empathised with her desire. However, reality, as it often does, soon kicks in and the park turns into a battleground, as does the shop, and lunchtime, and soon desperation sets in. I recognised every single one of those battles because I've been there. I've had the stubborn, intelligent child who can spot flawed logic at a hundred paces and find the smallest loophole to squeeze themselves through.

And I think that's why this book will speak to so many parents. Because actually, the day itself is pretty much normal life as a parent to young children - nothing intially goes catastrophically wrong, but it presents itself this way because we, aided in large part by society and particularly social media, put such immense pressure on ourselves to be a particular kind of perfect parent. What we sometimes lose sight of along the way is that life isn't perfect and our children will never remember most of the things we pile huge amounts of of effort into. Instead, they will remember the hike in the rain where we flooded the pub at the end of it because we were so wet. They'll remember the walk where we got hideously lost, because they 'saved our lives' when we tripped and nearly fell down a drop. And they'll laugh about them, because in fact they weren't the traumatic events we catastrophised them into, they were memories and bonds to be formed and shared.

Yes, there are times when this book is funny, but actually, for me, it was a poignant reminder that people and the lives they lead are never perfect, no matter how much social media feeds would have us believe otherwise. And yet, somehow, our kids generally end up fine. I saw a lot of myself in the narrator and I think this is another book I will add to my collection of ones to recommend to fellow parents if they want a healthy dose of comedic reality when they've had enough of being told they should be cherishing their offspring's latest poo-nami.