Bingeable Books for Full-On, Hands-On Days with Kids
What to read when you're doing three things at once.
The school holidays are upon us once again and I have two hands-on, full-on weeks with my sons ahead of me. As I mentioned in my last Marginalia, when I am with both children I seem to be doing three things at the same time, all the time. For example: I could be cooking a child-friendly pasta-based dinner and also having an in-depth discussion about the solar system and also trying to stop my two-year-old from hurling himself off of the dining table. During these wildly chaotic times, reading feels especially essential for finding escape, retaining my sanity and keeping a grip on who I am beyond motherhood. Ironically, it simultaneously becomes almost impossible to pick up a book. And so, I reach for bingeable, instantly readable books. These are the books that end up looking ragged and love-worn when I’m done with them because they’ve been shoved in the buggy every day, taken into the bathroom whilst my kids bathe, and read hastily whilst I’m waiting for the microwave to ping. What I know about books like this, is that I will make time for them, in a way that I often don’t make time around the demands of family life. These are also the kind of books that kept me in good company throughout my debilitating bedridden pregnancies and long nights breastfeeding my babies. For this issue of Crib Notes, I have chosen a handful of books which have entertained and engrossed me during busy weeks with my boys. Wherever you are on your motherhood journey, I hope you find something here to meet your reading needs.
The Straight-Up Binge Read
Come and Get It by Kiley Reid
Kiley Reid’s hotly-anticipated second novel introduces us to Agatha Paul, a visiting professor at the University of Arkansas. Agatha has a slick writing career, a stylish wardrobe and an ex-girlfriend back in New York, who she can’t get over. Researching how students navigate money, Agatha interviews a clique of privileged Southern girls and is scintillated by their total lack of self-awareness and their bitchy comments about people being ‘tacky’ and ‘ghetto’. Desperate for a distraction from heartbreak, her research begins to take a different, more problematic, turn. Meanwhile, working as a Residential Assistant at the girls’ dorm is Millie Cousins. Millie is hard-working, sensible and dreams of saving enough to buy a house after graduation. When Agatha offers her a (slightly off-the-books) opportunity to make some easy money, she quickly accepts. Soon, though, Millie is distracted from her hustle by an impossible crush on Agatha, and the animosity of girls in the dorm. Boundaries between all of these women blur, and power dynamics shift uncomfortably, with big consequences.
When to Read It: What I love about Kiley Reid is her precision when it comes to hitting the sweet spot between juicy commercial appeal and literary fiction. On a sentence by sentence level Come and Get It is breezy and fun, peppered with text messages, pop culture and pitch-perfect dialogue. The plot is pacy and tightly constructed -- I whipped through it at high-speed. Beneath its outrageous readability, however, is a pin-sharp, provocative look at the intersection of money, race and class. This novel is the perfect choice if you haven’t touched a book in months, or the mental load feels burdensome.
How To Read It: Come and Get It is out now in hardback, from Bloomsbury. However, at a chunky 400 pages, you might find the ebook more convenient -- and a better option when it comes to picking up the novel for a quick one-minute read whilst you’re waiting at the school gates.
What to Read Next: Kiley Reid’s equally page-turning debut, Such a Fun Age. Read my review (from February 2020s issue) of Crib Notes here.
The Historical Novel
The Painter’s Daughters by Emily Howes
Emily Howes’ captivating debut, The Painter’s Daughters, reimagines the lives of the daughters of the painter, Thomas Gainsborough. Opening in Ipswich in the 1750s, Peggy and her older sister, Molly, ramble freely through muddy fields, and in and out of their father’s studio. However, their seemingly golden childhood is blotted by a hint of darkness. Molly’s behavior sometimes frightens Peggy: she roams the house in her her sleep and sometimes appears to have ‘vanished from her own face’. The girls overhear heated exchanges between their parents about ‘lineage’, ‘blood’ and ‘Bedlam’. Although Peggy is young, she understands she must protect her sister from the pull of madness. When the family move to Bath, the so-called ‘Headquarters of Pleasure and Gaiety’, it is hoped that silk dresses and dancing lessons will iron out Molly’s wildness. However, amid gentile manners and dainty coffee cups, her moments of ‘distraction’ are harder to conceal. Meanwhile, Peggy begins to see that ‘secrets are all around’ her — and both her mother and father keep them. When she experiences desire for the first time, she realises exactly what she must sacrifice to keep Molly from an asylum. The Painters Daughters tenderly captures the complexities of sisterly love and the way the ‘iridescence of childhood’ darkens into adulthood. The novel is as vivid and textured as the artist’s portraits themselves — and it is enormously satisfying too!
When To Read It: In November I had one of the biggest mental health wobbles I have had in a long time. I felt utterly broken-hearted reading the news; my children were poorly with raging fevers for several weeks, and I was impacted by a global shortage of the medication which enables me to cope with demands of everyday life. In other words, it was a perfect storm. This immersive novel allowed me to momentarily batten down my hatches and wait out the worst of it. I knew I was in safe hands with Emily Howes’ richly evocative, sure-handed storytelling.
Sensitive Content: One incidence of miscarriage.
How to Read It: The Painters Daughters is out now from Phoenix in a stunning 380 page hardback (buy it here!). I think this grippingly plotted debut would also be a fabulous audiobook choice.
What to Read Next: The Painter’s Daughter reminded me of Maggie O’Farrell’s The Marriage Portrait and Hamnet. Read my reviews here and here.
The Literary Obsession
Cursed Bread by Sophie Mackintosh
Sophie Mackintosh’s latest novel, Cursed Bread, is about a baker’s wife living in post-war rural France. Elodie is horny and dissatisfied with provincial life. Over the counter at the bakery, the townspeople tell her their secrets. Washing clothes at the lavoir, she exchanges morsels of gossip with the other women. But Elodie is alone with her desires. She is almost jealous of the bread her husband kneads with his hands, and feels she is guilty of ‘murdering’ her marriage through familiarity. The arrival of a glamorous American couple — ‘the ambassador’ and his wife, Violet — causes a stir in the town. There are rumours that Violet — who favours beribboned knickers and red lipstick, crystallised fruit and chocolates — is ‘mad’ or ‘a whore’. At a party, Elodie witnesses a strange, sexually-charged encounter between husband and wife, watching through a crack in the doorway. When Violet and Elodie become close, Elodie finds herself ensnared in the couple’s erotic game of cat and mouse. And as the hot summer passes, inexplicable and disturbing things begin to happen in the village. Cursed Bread is a feverish, mesmerising read, full of envy, wanting and dread.
When to Read It: Every now and then I long to read something that is wholly adult, something which offers a sharp contrast to the messy, cheerful domestic-sphere I occupy most of the time; something that allows me to reconnect with a different version of myself, rather than the patient, reliable stay-at-home-mummy I tend to be during the daytime hours. This tantalising fable more than satiated my appetite.
How to Read It: One of the things I love about Sophie Mackintosh’s novels is how pared-back they are: just cool, clean prose. There’s nothing unnecessary or self-indulgent here, and consequently this novel is a concise 192 pages, which can be read over just a few sittings. Cursed Bread is newly out in a slim paperback edition. I loved the audiobook, too.
What to Read Next: Sophie Mackintosh’s Blue Ticket, a hypnotic, Handmaid’s-Tale-esque story of a dystopian near-future, in which women's reproductive choices are taken out of their hands.
The Thriller
Rabbit Hole by Kate Brody
Twenty-six-year old Teddy Amstrong’s entire adult life has been haunted by the disappearance of her older sister, Angie. When her father kills himself, his obsessive double life comes to light: a dark lattice of conspiracy theories about what happened to Angie; sordid Reddit threads; consultations with a psychic and scrawled notes. Online message boards reveal years of speculation about Teddy’s family, accusations towards their father and lecherous comments about the sisters’ adolescent bodies. Repulsed and riveted, Teddy ends up falling into the same rabbit hole as her dad. A mystery phone number leads Teddy to Bill, a night of rough sex and the sense of something being concealed from her. But it is when Teddy meets Mickey — a charismatic nineteen-year-old, who claims to have known her dad — that her investigation becomes self-destructive. And yet, Teddy isn't your average messed-up twenty-something. Sure, her behaviour is unquestionably reckless — she drinks herself into oblivion; she becomes fixated on a shady teenager; she stalks estranged family members, and she says inappropriate things to the high school students she teaches — but, throughout Teddy has a cynical, 'fuck-this' kind of agency which I couldn't help but admire. After years of being the long-suffering Daughter Who Didn't Go Missing, it seems as if, subconsciously, she finally has an intoxicating excuse to behave as badly as she likes. Does it bring her closer to Angie in the end? I'll let you find out. Rabbit Hole is sly, seedily sexy and totally riveting.
When to Read It: I don’t read many thrillers, but every now and then I feel the need for something as addictive as a Netflix series, that hooks my attention instantly and refuses to let it go. During my sickly, shattering second pregnancy and — a year later — when my five-month-old-baby cried through the night with a chest infection, I passed the time with twisty, bingeable books. If this is you right now, I recommend getting your fix with Kate Brody’s Rabbit Hole.
How to Read It: I listened to the audiobook, flawlessly read by Stephanie Cannon. The novel is currently available in a striking hardback edition, but at 371 pages it is on the chunkier side.
Sensitive Content: The book opens with Teddy’s father’s suicide. Whilst the novel contains speculation about sexual abuse, Rabbit Hole steers refreshingly clear of grisly, misogynistic violence.
What to Read Next: Ottessa Moshfegh’s Eileen, as well as True Story by Kate Reid Petty and The Turnout by Megan Abbott.
No Time to Read Right Now?
One to Pre-order
We may only be four months into the year, but I’m calling it: Kaliane Bradley’s The Ministry of Time is going to be one of the best books I have read in 2024. In this crackling, virtuosic novel, a civil servant takes a job in a mysterious new government ministry bringing ‘expats’ from the past into the 21st century. Her job is to ensure that Commander Graham Gore, an incredibly sexy arctic explorer from 1847, adjusts to modern life. As the months pass, a tender and increasingly intense affection develops between Gore and the narrator. My bookseller pal, Katie Clapham, and I both raced through this novel, texting each other a combination of page numbers, exclamation marks and quotations throughout. This is a suspenseful, achingly romantic, audacious state-of-the-nation-meets-love-story-meets-sci-fi novel. The Ministry of Time is out from Sceptre on May 14th. Pre-order it now.
Two Literary Podcasts to Enjoy on the Go
I bloody love Sara & Cariad’s Weirdos Book Club, hosted by Sara Pascoe and Cariad Lloyd. My favourite brand of literary discussion doesn’t take itself too seriously. This podcast — a place for the ‘lonely outsider to feel accepted and appreciated’ — is relaxed, irreverent and thought-provoking. The books, meanwhile, all have a delicious dash of literary weirdness. They’ve featured some Crib Notes favourites, including Sheena Patel’s I’m A Fan; Nell Stevens’s Briefly, A Delicious Life and Send Nudes by Saba Sams. Essentially, Sara and Cariad have excellent literary taste, excellent book chat and if you enjoy Crib Notes, I think you’ll like this podcast too. Listen to Sara & Cariad’s Weirdos Book Club here.
Meanwhile, Katie Clapham recommends In Haste with Alice Vincent and Charlotte Runcie. She says, ‘In Haste is filling the Literary Friction-shaped hole in my podcast library right now. They've already shared some great interviews - my favourite episode was Thomas Morris - and it's lovely to hear hosts Alice and Charlotte chatting about balancing their own writing practices around their children - I'd say it's a perfect podcast for readers of Crib Notes.’
About Me
I'm Elizabeth. Before my eldest son was born in October 2018, I worked as a book publicist and literary event manager. I started Crib Notes in December 2019 as a convenient overlap of the two things I loved the most: being a mother to my son and reading. I wanted to help other parents find the same solace in books that I had found — I wanted Crib Notes to feel like a friend; a kind voice and a gentle hand on the shoulder saying ‘Look, I know you’re knackered, but this book might be exactly what you need right now’. These days I look after my two little boys. I read, write and chair literary events in the margins of motherhood.
This feels exactly like the list of books I’ve been looking for!!! Amazing. You write about them so delightfully that I cannot wait to check them all out. I’ve found myself leaning in to my romance and t.swift phase of life and I think it is precisely because my littles are 4&2 and at home with me I need to read in the in-betweens! Thanks for this