The Good Enough Mother written by Anoushka Beazley, publisher Larchwood Press, is available NOW in ebook and paperback format.
To buy link:
Product Details (as per amazon page)
Gatlin – a leafy, affluent town: Chelsea tractors and ladies who lunch. However all is not as it seems. Drea, a most unnatural mother, struggles to find private school fees for her step-daughter Ava after her boyfriend leaves her for another woman. Watching the yummy mummies she becomes inspired, hatching a daring and criminal plan…unleashing all hell in the quiet town of Gatlin. Can Drea survive the fallout and the wrath of the PTA? A satirical and hilarious black comedy about love, motherhood and the human condition.
I’d like to thank the author for an arc in return for a review.
This was one crazy, frank, laugh out loud story about a woman surviving motherhood in an upmarket suburban village. This is Anoushka Beazley’s debut novel and what a start to her writing career! I loved the author’s style of writing, it was refreshingly honest, Anoushka definitely ‘spared no punches’ with her narrative. It was very raw and shocking at times but very comical and this honesty was so addictive.
This is the story of Drea, a woman left with her estranged partner’s teenage daughter coping with life as a single mum in an affluent area. Drea is not keen on motherhood but she has been left with no option but to step in and step up to motherly duties for her step daughter Ava. Gatlin is full of ‘perfect’ mums with designer bags and huge cars all competing for the parking spot outside school and this is one of Drea’s first battles she faces. Drea is also left struggling financially as Alex, Ava’s father, has left her with no money to fund his daughter’s private school fees. Drea refuses to let this relationship separation change her step daughter’s life so Drea embarks on some very unorthodox ways of making money. Whilst Drea was trying to find the money to pay for the school fees the quiet surbuban village Gatlin has become a hot crime spot with robberies and murder and Drea has somehow become caught up in the middle of it.
There was more to this story than surviving the school gates. Drea was emotionally fighting events in her past that have been controlling her life ever since. Through all the satirical humour we see a more vulnerable side to Drea that is quite humbling. The author, Anoushka Beazley, cleverly dealt with some serious issues with this novel but managed to keep the book quite light with humour and frankness emanating from the pages. A refreshingly honest, laugh out loud story about motherhood, believing in yourself and the acceptance of love. 4/5*
I’d like to share an extract with you that I particularly enjoyed:
Nature versus nurture. Are you born into motherhood or do you learn it like any other learned behaviour? I certainly did not feel that driving Ava to school was a normal way to begin my day, but driving other people’s children as well? Obviously I understood the convenience factor, but how did these women cope with the routine? The monotony of these actions at the same time every day was unbearable. The worst kind of claustrophobia: to suffocate within the confines of one’s own life. How was adding someone else’s offspring to the shit bucket meant to improve anything? The autistic excuse for adventure, this groundhog-day road trip, this driving to one’s own death only to never drive off the cliff; some women found this a delight – I could see it in their eyes. They sprang out of their cars bubbling with joy to be reunited with their fellow inmates that they had seen just hours before doing the exact same thing. Metronomes were more spontaneous. No, I was not born to do this and neither had I learned to do this. What I had done was cultivated and grown a strong-rooted tree of hate whose leaves fell upon the road like autumnal foliage every time I did. As they crunched into fibrotic dust beneath my tyres, the sinuous roots twisted inward pulling me that inch further down into the belly of the earth, lowering me into the bowels of hell, which stank from the putrefied mummies of those whose had died insidiously, a little every day, on the school run.
To find out more about Anoushka Beazley and her writing please visit the following pages:
Website: http://www.anoushkabeazley.com/
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/thegoodenoughmother/
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/AnoushkaBeazley
kraftireader 
This excerpt is brilliant, truly brilliant. The writer, Anoushka Beazley, has the humour of William Boyd, the bitter derision of T.C. Boyle and the descriptive powers of Anita Brookner. If the rest of the novel is of this standard, it should be put forward for the Booker Prize.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thank you Alison, I will pass your comments on.
LikeLike