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Natural Disaster

by Lisa Owens

One day, many competing demands

Regular price $17.71 USD
Regular price $29.52 USD Sale price $17.71 USD
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Awards & Recognition

  • Critical praise

    Praised by Nathan Filer as “a thunderously good novel”

    Nathan Filer praises the novel as “a thunderously good novel,” describing its emotional and humorous impact.

AlbakiReads Editorial

One day, many competing demands

Set across a single day, the novel centers on a mother’s plan to spend one last special day with her children before returning to work after maternity leave. That carefully anticipated occasion becomes a frame for the overlapping pressures of motherhood, marriage, work, and personal identity. The 24-hour structure keeps the focus on the everyday logistics and uncertainties of being a woman and a parent, while the description signals both comedy and bittersweet reflection. Its subject is the gap between an idealized family day and the complicated reality of living one.

Good fit for readers who enjoy

  • Readers interested in fiction about motherhood and family life.
  • Readers who enjoy novels focused on the tensions between caregiving, work, and personal identity.
  • Readers looking for a story that combines domestic comedy with bittersweet themes.

Themes

Motherhood and caregivingWork and familyWomen’s identityExpectations versus reality

Based on publisher information and book metadata.

Book overview

One perfect day. A million catastrophes.

Unfolding across 24 hours, this is a propulsive, funny and sharply observed novel about the absurd, frustrating, hilarious, precarious, bittersweet, sometimes astonishing challenge--literal, existential--of being a woman, a mother, a wife, a person for one single, entire day.


For weeks she has been saying it will be their special day. One last, perfect day with her children before she returns to work after maternity leave. What's the worst that can happen?

A high-octane Mrs. Dalloway for our hectic times, Natural Disaster is "a thunderously good novel--the kind that makes you rock with laughter, shed a genuine tear, and immediately think of which friends you're going to lend it to first." (Nathan Filer, author of The Shock of the Fall)
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