Consider Yourself Kissed

There are no shortcuts to being a family

I briefly mentioned this book last month in a haze of poisonous envy at the amazing cover quotes the author has garnered from Meg Wolitzer, Liane Moriarty and so on. Then it turned out that the author, Jessica Stanley, reads the Spike! Not only that, I have been chatting to her on and off for years on IG, where she is A Daily Dose of Jess. Once I worked this out, and apologised to her over email for my slightly snippy tone, I did promise to read the whole book and writer a nicer and less brittle post.

Consider Yourself Kissed is a book about a couple who, over the years, unravel due to the pressures of work and children. I have said before that I don’t have much time for books that complain about the undue stress placed on women when it comes to motherhood - it’s a bit of a stuck record - but this book isn’t a complaint, it’s more of a step-by-step How It Happens. Stanley is very good at patiently laying out exactly how mothers fall behind in their careers and mental health by tiny increments, until they’re packing their bags and leaving their husband and children because they’re so crazed with it all.

‘Those were the worst four months of my life,’ our heroine Coralie says to her boyfriend Adam. ‘Running from pillar to post, working, not a minute to myself, but you’re the stressed one, you’re the one with “deadlines”. Deadlines! Five a.m. Florence is up; nine a.m. nursery drop-off; fifteen minutes later, I’m on the bus to spend all day doing pointless bullshit for Stefan, who used to be my colleague and is somehow now my boss? I have to run to get Florence by six - or pay a late fee! Six-thirty, dinner - or Florence loses her shit! Seven: Florence’s bath, alone. Seven-thirty: Florence’s bedtime, ALONE! It’s all hopeless, I feel absolutely hopeless.’

Coralie is eventually driven so bonkers that she flees the family home.

“Do you know what you want to do, Cor?” Daniel asked.

Die, she wanted to say. Or be alive again. But not be like this, a dead person going through the motions. A dead mother scaring the kids.

What she wanted was to be alone somewhere safe. But she couldn’t be without her children. And she couldn’t be with her children, not in that ceaseless, unrelenting way. She tried to explain that.

The book is set against the events of Brexit and the pandemic and I found this and the small-children juggle faintly triggering, but you might not be such a weakling.

I went to see my friend Katie Law when Kitty had just been born and I was staggering about in a boggle-eyed freak. She said, “You get your life back a bit when your youngest turns three.” I thought, “Youngest? THREE?! Years? I cannot wait that long.” But I could and I did and she was right.

Later in the book, Coralie observes that with a bit of control and distance, she can enjoy motherhood.

This is what she’d thought being a mother would be like. Doing one thing at a time, and kindly.

At many turns I wanted to reach into the book and pat Coralie and tell her that motherhood does, in the end, become something like that. But it’s a hard road. And there are no shortcuts.

This book will be published on 8th May and if you like the sound of it, do the author a favour and pre-order. I know that I, now, am so very boring about pre-orders, but it really does matter to authors.