Surviving motherhood? It's all about having the right support network.
Lawyer and new mum Cassie has a husband who converses mainly through jokes, a best friend on the other side of the world, and a taskforce of Babycraft mothers who make her feel she has about as much maternal aptitude as a jellyfish.
Husband Jonathan dismisses Cassie’s maternal anxieties, but is he really paying attention to his struggling wife? He’s started sleep talking and it seems there’s more on his mind than he’s letting on. Then sexy, swaggering ex-boyfriend Malkie saunters into Cassie’s life again.
Unlike Jonathan, he ‘gets’ her. He’d like to get her into bed again, too…
And on top of all her emotional turmoil, she also finds herself advising a funeral director on ghost protocol and becomes involved in an act of hotel spa fraud, never mind hiding cans of wasp spray all over the house to deal with the stalker who seems to be lurking everywhere she looks. Marriage and motherhood isn’t the fairytale Cassie thought it would be. Will her strange new world fall apart around her or will tiny acts of love be enough to get her through?
Funny, perceptive and real, Tiny Acts of Love portrays the rawness of motherhood, the flipside of love and the powerful lure of paths not taken.
What inspired Tiny Acts of Love?
When my first baby, Emily, was a few days old, a friend from my antenatal class phoned for a chat. (Unlike the rather challenging Babycraft group in Tiny Acts of Love, the mums in my antenatal class couldn’t have been lovelier.) I couldn’t even begin to explain the shellshock I was feeling, but I think my friend could hear it in my voice. She told me a saying she’d heard – that deciding to have a baby is like deciding to have your heart walk around outside your body for the rest of your life. I remember my tears of relief to hear that I wasn’t the first mum in the world to feel like that.
Much later, I began to think this would be an interesting idea to explore in a novel… What would it mean for your marriage/relationship if you felt as though your heart was now living and beating inside a third person? What would it mean for you professionally if you had to leave your heart in a nursery every time you went to work? What would it mean for your sense of identity and your sense of being in control (or not) of your own world? I wanted to get across that feeling, which I experienced in the early days of parenthood, that nothing would ever be safe again. After I’d got over the shellshock (mostly – I don’t think you ever do completely!) I found myself wanting to write about the funny side of parenthood too, so I decided to weave the more serious themes into a funny, mummy-lit type of novel.
What do you want people to get out of this book?
I want them to laugh, and to feel like they’re in good company with Cassie, the main character. I want them to believe in her, and to feel as if they’re going on a journey along with her. If they feel uplifted as they turn the last page, and perhaps just a bit sad to be saying goodbye, then I’ll have done everything I set out to do.
Do you have a writing routine? Can you tell us about it?
My writing patterns have changed along with the routines of my two daughters as they’ve grown. Most of Tiny Acts of Love was written in the car – I always had to drive my youngest around to get her to take her nap, then I’d pull up, get out the laptop and write for an hour. Now she likes me to sit with her while she falls asleep at night, so I often write then. My brain seems to be more creative at night, and I find it easiest to write when everyone else is asleep, all the chores are done and the house is quiet. I have to be careful not to get too carried away, though – it takes ages to wind down again afterwards.
When did you start writing?
I started writing when I was 30. My daughter Emily was nearly two, and the idea for the novel had been playing on my mind for some time. One evening, my husband was working late and there was nothing good on television, so I opened up the laptop and started writing. Those were the first words of Tiny Acts of Love.
Besides writing, what are your hobbies/interests?
I love music, whether it’s singing along in the car, playing Just Dance on the PlayStation with my daughters, or playing the piano. I find baking very therapeutic (more so when my four-year-old is not ‘helping’!)
What are you currently reading?
I recently discovered Liane Moriarty and read The Hypnotist’s Love Story and The Husband’s Secret back to back. They’re brilliantly drawn, darkly funny in places, and so insightful about relationships in all their complicated, messy glory. I’ve just started another of Moriarty’s – What Alice Forgot.
About the Author
Lucy Lawrie was born in Edinburgh, and gained an honours degree in English Literature from Durham University before going on to study law. She worked as a lawyer in Edinburgh for several years, specialising in Employment and Pensions law. When Lucy was on maternity leave with her first baby, she unearthed a primary two homework book in which she’d stated, in very wobbly handwriting: ‘I want to be an AUTHOR when I grow up.’ To appease her six-year old self, she began writing her first novel.
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