Natural Disaster

“A Mrs. Dalloway for our era, Natural Disaster is hard not to race through. Marrying humor, tension, and so much realness of raising two under four, Natural Disaster bursts out of the gate and doesn’t stop galloping until the final page. Relatable on so many levels, parents and non-parents will devour this novel.”

“A smart and painfully relatable tale of a new mother’s anxieties...Owens is an excellent anthropologist of new motherhood, her prose is nuanced and funny, and the novel builds by gradual accumulation of detail to a surprisingly weighty denouement. It’s a keen-eyed narrative.”

"[A]t once wryly funny and analytical, dissecting 21st-century middle-class motherhood with aplomb...The neuroses of motherhood are laid bare in this witty and poignant novel."
 

"The pressures placed on the modern working mother shape Owens’ latest...Told entirely in a stream of consciousness, Natural Disaster follows the narrator’s shifting thoughts as she navigates the day...confront[ing] difficult subjects such as resentment, infidelity, and burnout, while showing how love can also feel demanding, conflicted, and hard to sustain. Owens presents a clear account of a woman trying to meet competing demands. The result is a focused study of motherhood, disappointment, and love."

“I absolutely loved it...A forensic, agonizingly relatable account of the highs and lows and in-betweens of one whole ordinary day in a life with two small children. Funny, dark, absurd, pin-sharp, insightful, propulsive, unputdownable.”

“Lisa Owens lays bare the pains, perils, and joys of motherhood, all captured over the course of a single day. Hilarious, brilliant, utterly exhilarating.”

"A profoundly relatable novel, Natural Disaster captures the joy amid the tedium of caretaking. Interrogating her heroine’s fears and neuroses, Owens offers refreshing insights into motherhood, marriage, and what it means to be a family."

“Eminently readable, recognizable, and reassuring. I read this in a day. One Dalloway-esque day, a million catastrophes, the intense highs and lows of being a mother, a partner, a woman in this world. It's fantastic.”

“Brilliant, hilarious, gut-punchingly truth-telling.”

“Lisa Owens mines gold from the smallest details of life. 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.”

“If you have ever spent a difficult hour—let alone a difficult day—with young children, I promise you that you will LOVE Natural Disaster. It's hilarious and honest and so astute about the quotidian frustrations of motherhood and marriage. There were times I wondered if Lisa had somehow managed to get inside my head and read my thoughts. It's a blisteringly good read.”