The Bad Mother's Handbook (2015) - Plot & Excerpts
So many interesting and challenging topics covered in one book! Teen pregnancy, adoption (not of the teen's baby), dementia, caring for the elderly, rising above your roots, repeating/learning from mistakes, the challenges of being a member of the sandwich generation (being both parent and caregiver of a parent)... There's a lot here, and dealt with exceedingly well.I very much enjoyed this book, but I vacillated between three and four stars because I was so consistently annoyed by Karen, the mother in the middle.Three women share a small home in a less-than-classy area of a less-than-affluent town. Nan, the grandmother, lives much in memory and only peripherally in real time. Still, she manages to be at times sensible and even occasionally obliquely insightful in a wry way. She is always grounded in family. She loves her daughter, Karen, she loves her granddaughter, Charlotte.The 17-year-old granddaughter, Charlotte, is very sensible for seventeen, smart and grounded. A little lacking in self-awareness at times, but then who isn't, at seventeen? Her pregnancy is the central event of the book, and a catalyst for any number of changes.It was the mother, Karen, who I found hard to take. At 34, she has pretty much the same emotional maturity as Charlotte, and what is tolerable in an adolescent is unspeakably annoying in an adult. Her ridiculous self-consciousness when out on a date (which leads to her making a drunken fool of herself), her utterly self-absorbed reaction to Charlotte's pregnancy, those were appalling. I was unspeakably exasperated with her dealings with her daughter.I was frustrated because -- largely because of Karen's immaturity, I'd say -- there was no sense of a family pulling together in that household, only of three individuals leading parallel lives. It's all too easy to blame the teen for her secretiveness. I've had three; sure, they keep things to themselves, but they'll talk to you if they can trust you to be a supportive adult, not a petulant peer. They can find those every day at school...Karen's frustrations with her mother, on the other hand, and her unhappiness with her situation, stuck in the middle, caring for everyone -- for that I had a lot of sympathy. Despite her poor behaviour with her daughter, she manages as well as can be expected with her mother.Karen does receive a couple of smacks upside the head through the course of the book, and through these manages a credible amount of growth. No, in truth I found it a bit incredible, that this short-sighted, self-absorbed woman manage those changes in such a short amount of time, with so little introspection. It's not that Karen was unlikeable. She was just so damned immature, she was tedious.I do like where the book ended, I did enjoy the changes in Karen. I just didn't find them particularly credible.Charlotte and Nan, however? Lovely people, and for their sakes, and because the book delivered any number of laugh-out-loud moments, despite the serious topics, I gave it a four.
I don't want to be one of those people who are never impressed with anything, so I gave this book 5 stars although it was not what I expected it to be. After reading the blurbs I thought this would be a funny book about generations of mother-daughter relationships, with witty dialogues and describing a kind of Gilnore Girls mother-daughter closeness. It was far from my expectations. However, despite the person that wrote the blurbs, this book deserves all the stars it can get because it realistically describes the female relationships in a struggling lower-middle-class family, burdened with sudden teenage pregnancy (among all their other problems). The three generations of women living under the same roof all have different problems but one common quality; their quirky approach to life and dealing with their problems. Throughout the book we encounter a whirl of problems/themes; the search for one's identity, dealing with financial problems, the struggles of a family with a member suffering from dementia, teenage pregnancy, first love, struggle for social acceptance... Without giving too much away, I will conclude by saying that this book is far from a typical chick lit. It is a wonderful book with three amazing female characters who are experiencing the greatest changes in their lives. Definitely worth reading!
What do You think about The Bad Mother's Handbook (2015)?
I very much enjoyed 'The Bad Mother's Handbook'. I see from some of the other reviews that they were expecting something in the vein of 'Bored Housewives' meets 'Sex in the City' and were disappointed at the lack of beautiful people, designer labels, and exotic destinations. I was also expecting something similar and was very pleased to find an entirely different book. This is a very well written book, closely observed, and without sentimentality it reaches into real lives in a ways that can really touch the reader. It is also, in many places, very funny. The interplay between the three characters (each written in the first person) works well for me. It looks like a difficult trick to pull off, but Kate Long has managed with great success. A book that left me feeling better than I did before I opened it in all sorts of ways.[Note: The book got made into a TV dramatization with Catherine Tate and Robert-Twilight-Pattinson. I've not seen it yet but hope to one day.]
—Mark Lawrence
I enjoyed this book very much, and it wasn't difficult to see why it became a best-seller and was adapted for TV. The narrative was keenly written and the characters nicely constructed. The dialogue had a smattering of dialect, but not too much, but enough to bring out the Northern charm. At the start of the book I did find it difficult to distinguish between Charlotte's voice and her mothers, but it soon settled down. I did however find the sporadic words written in upper-case off-putting. There were some lovely phrases that I really did enjoy, particularly Nan saying she was so hungry she could eat a buttered frog, and my favourite, 'the sky was like tracing paper' (genius).
—Barry Lillie
I’ve seen the movie multiple times and liked it, so I wasn’t in a hurry to read the book. It turns out, the book really is better than the movie. Go figure!The Bad Mother’s Handbook chronicles a year in the life of a three generation household – daughter Charlotte, mother Karen and grandmother Nan. It examines mother/daughter relationships in many different forms; teen moms, single moms, adopted moms, birth moms, etc. On the flipside, it shows what it means to be a daughter. Sounds sappy, I know, but honestly, this is a good book. It can be realistic and funny, heartbreaking and joyous. God, I sound like a flipping Hallmark commercial! I think what I liked best is the characterization. These people are deeply flawed and kind of crazy, yet I can relate to them. (What does that say about me?) I especially loved Charlotte and her unlikely romance with a weirdo boy at school. He was totally the guy I would have gone for, sweet and nerdy. Grandmother, Nan, has dementia and health issues with stress Karen to the max. You want to get angry with Karen for losing her temper all of the time, but if you put yourself in her position, she can sympathize with her situation.Something American readers might have trouble with is the language. This is a contemporary British fiction written in the vernacular of the working class. I read a lot of Brit Lit, of I didn’t find it distracting, but there are those who might. The point of view shifts can be distracting as well. POV changes frequently and it takes a paragraph or so before you can figure out who is speaking. It gets easier as the book goes on, but in the beginning, it inhibited the reading flow. Overall, I give The Bad Mother’s Handbook…Plot – 3 bookmarksCharacters – 4 ½ bookmarksHumor – 3 bookmarksLove Story – 3 ½ bookmarksDream Cast (otherwise known as who I pictured while reading) – It’s probably no surprise that that I can only picture the movie cast, considering I’ve seen it like five times. Karen (Catherine Tate), Nan (Anne Reid), Charlotte (Holly Grainger), Daniel (Rob Pattinson)
—Jesi
