ONE OF THOSE MOTHERS

One of Those Mothers is a raw domestic thriller for fans of Liane Moriarty and The Slap.

The residents of Point Heed keep nice houses and sign up as parent help at the local school. Occasionally they cheat on their taxes. Sometimes they fantasise about having sex with someone other than their partner. And every now and then they do drugs. But that doesn't make them bad people, does it? When a local father is convicted of the possession and distribution of child pornography, the tight-knit, middle class community is quick to unravel. Granted permanent name suppression friend turns on friend, neighbour delivers up neighbour, and hysteria rapidly engulfs. Who among them was capable of such moral trespass? Bridget, Roz and Lucy have been friends forever. Their lives revolve around their children, their community, each other. With their husbands and kids, they holiday together every year. Every year, until last summer, when everything went so terribly wrong. They tell you things are never as bad as you fear, but what if they're worse? Worse than you could have ever imagined. Were they all complicit? Certainly, they were guilty of looking in all the wrong places. The novel is firmly rooted in domestic life, shining a light onto the seediness that can intrude into the mundanity of the everyday. One of Those Mothers both embraces and skewers the aspirations and contradictions of the upwardly middle-class: the work and minutiae of marriage, sex, status, friendship, and parenting. It holds a mirror to the aspirations and ugliness of three best friends who live in a tight-knit school community, and the complications that arise when you have known someone perhaps too long. All while these friends, and much of the community, try to unravel who is responsible for a sickening crime that seems to have gone barely punished. But it also raises questions about how we judge others - and ourselves - and why that judgment can be so wrong. Thrice nominated for New Zealand's best columnist, Megan Nicol Reed spent seven long years mining her life for a column that originally ran in the Sunday Star Times and then the New Zealand Herald's Canvas magazine. Loved and hated in equal measure, the former journalist's weekly words never failed to provoke a reaction among readers. She became particularly known for her gentle skewering of the middle classes. You can find some of her columns here: https://www.nzherald.co.nz/author/megan-nicol-reed/ Megan lives in Auckland with her husband, two teenage children and dog. One of Those Mothers is her first novel.