Little Bandaged Days
By Kyra Wilder
Blurb
What is a mother anyway when her children are asleep? What could she possibly be? If a tree falls in a forest. It’s like that, isn’t it?
A mother moves to Geneva with her husband and their two young children. In their beautiful new rented apartment, surrounded by their rented furniture, and several Swiss instructions to maintain quiet, she finds herself totally isolated. Her husband’s job means he is almost never present, and her entire world is caring for her children – making sure they are happy, and fed and comfortable, and that they can be seen as the happy, well-fed, comfortable family they should be. Everything is perfect.
But, of course, it’s not. The isolation, the sleeplessness, the demands of two people under two, are getting to Erika. She has never been so alone, and once the children are asleep, there are just too many hours to fill until morning, and there is something coming to get her . . .
Our Review
On the one hand, Little Bandaged Days by Kyra Wilder was technically a very well written book, the prose was lyrical and engaging. On the other, it was also very difficult to read and frustrating at times as well.
I try not to put down a book without finishing it if I have been sent it for review, but I nearly did so with this and part of me is annoyed with myself for not just abandoning it when I wanted to. Unfortunately, Little Bandaged Days was written in such a way that I wanted to find out what happened, but I also wanted the book to be over because it was repetitive at times.
A mother and her husband relocate to a new apartment in Geneva for the husband’s new job. The mother wants everything to be just right and perfect, but she finds Swiss life quite isolating. Her husband, known only as M, is away often for work and works long hours so she spends all her time with her two small children E and B. As the book progresses, we see a marked deterioration in the mother’s mental state and are left wondering exactly what will happen with the children.
I found the relationship between M and the mother to be quite unrealistic in terms of the balance of power and this frustrated me endlessly whilst I was reading the book.
“If I was finding everything to be harder than I thought I might find it, well, I told myself, M was working hard too. I knew he was working hard and everything would be easier for him, and more equal really, if everything at home was perfect and dinner was cooked well and ready for him.”
The more their relationship is deteriorating from the reader’s point of view the worse her obsession with keeping house becomes.
The latter part of the book was very hard to read as the mother of a small child.
I can see that some readers will rave about this book but for me it was a bit of a struggle.
Our Final Rating...
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