Bad Mother's Handbook

I've waited a long time for a book like this. Kate Long tells it like it is. She understands the lives the 'real' women lead. There are no handsome barristers waiting to make their way into the pages of a woman's diary, no impossibly glossy homes, and designer clothes. These women live in a cramped council house, struggling to get along with each other, and manage their relationships outside the home. This is a book full of warmth and honesty, some of it painfully so. Nan, Karen and Charlotte (Charlie), three generations of the same family, live in uneasy and sometimes suffocating circumstances. Karen has to care for Nan, who is not as far off her rocker as Karen believes, and try to control her teenage daughter Charlie, whilst still trying to have a life of her own, which may or may not include a new relationship with the head of the school where she works as a classroom assistant. Told from the perspective of each woman, this book neatly, but without preaching, explains how misunderstandings happen within families, and how, at times, we can all feel the victim. As the mother of a teenager and having been one myself, I could relate to both Karen and Charlotte in equal measure (and if I'm honest, Nan's elderly dottiness strikes a bit close to home too!)