Natural Disaster
A Novel
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- Pre-Order
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- Expected Jul 7, 2026
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
One perfect day. A million catastrophes.
Unfolding across 24 hours, this is a propulsive, funny and sharply observed novel about the absurd, frustrating, hilarious, precarious, bittersweet, sometimes astonishing challenge—literal, existential—of being a woman, a mother, a wife, a person for one single, entire day.
For weeks she has been saying it will be their special day. One last, perfect day with her children before she returns to work after maternity leave. What’s the worst that can happen?
A high-octane Mrs. Dalloway for our hectic times, 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.” (Nathan Filer, author of The Shock of the Fall)
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
British writer Owens (Not Working) offers a smart and painfully relatable tale of a new mother's anxieties. The novel takes places over the final 24 hours of the unnamed protagonist's maternity leave. Despite the urging of her "fellow working mothers" to leave her two children at day care and treat herself to a spa, she opts instead for a special day out with her children. Things go wrong from the start, with the baby, Rudy, waking at 4:45 a.m., followed by his four-year-old brother, Felix. The situation is exacerbated by the fact that the mother's husband is out of town for work. Owens presents the day as a realistic mixture of mind-numbing boredom and agonizing worry, as when the protagonist feels an "inescapable certainty" that her husband is cheating on her, and fears that they're ruining their children by sending them to a day care with "iron bars on the windows." The stakes ratchet up bit by bit, as the mother and her children face one challenge after another, from an ill-advised pastry order to a rough playground exit and Felix's alarmingly high fever. 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.
