Golding’s prose actually brought me to a stage of nausea as I read the descriptions of what was being done to Lauren’s body. The first is the tangible, physical horror. There are two levels to the horror in this novel. “She was a pulsating piece of meat full of inconvenient nerve-endings and un-cauterised vessels.” Usually we just skip ahead to when the mother leaves the hospital, so I like that Golding takes the time to bring us into the reality of Lauren’s exhaustingly grim world – a reality for many mothers. I don’t think I have ever read a book that lingers so much on the immediacy of childbirth and its aftermath.
Lauren is so utterly human and vulnerable, which instantly makes her likeable. What makes it worse for our protagonist Lauren is that she has two babies to deal with, when one baby alone is enough to send most running for the hills. Your body no longer looks the way it used to, the healing and recuperation can take a toll and now, suddenly and a little intrusively, there is a newcomer to consider. There is such joy experienced in creation, yet your body and your mind is in a way torched and set ablaze to bring forth new life. Motherhood, like other things in life, contains paradoxical aspects. “Lauren’s reflection had deep shadowed holes where it should have had eyes.
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