I thought this was well-written and captured the stiffling nature of early(ish) motherhood well. However, I found it slow going and eventually decided it was DNF around a third in. Not one for me (at least at the moment), but I'm sure other readers will enjoy the evocative writing.

I enjoyed this book for the most part. It’s a cleverly written account of a mother’s descent into madness, successfully creating a looming sense of discomfort and apprehension which made this a fast-paced read for me despite the lack of much actually going on.

As a reader, I felt close to the narrator, witnessing her struggles first hand and privy to her thoughts almost like reading a diary. All in all, it’s written well and provides an interesting take on mental health and motherhood.

***Thanks to NetGalley and Picador for the ARC in exchange for an honest review!

Thank you to Netgalley, Kyra Wilder and Pan Macmillan/Picador for this e-copy in return for my honest review. I have such mixed feelings about this book. I am completely torn between loving and hating it. The writing style is so terrifyingly claustrophobic, I felt I was holding my breath throughout. The slow unravelling of Erika was absolutely chilling. I read it in a day as I couldn't put it down.

A book like this comes maybe every hundred you read. The prose is hypnotic. It was as if the narrator was giving a terrifying soliloquy, and I was merely a witness to her dark, horrified mind. It is a story of anxiety, loneliness, paranoia, fear, and hopelessness. I felt it all with every fiber of my being. Some parts left me confused and the ending is completely nonsensical but that was probably the point. I just don’t know. It is an experience I won’t soon forget but an explanation would be surely be welcome.

Little Bandaged Days by Kyra Wilder is a novel about a trailing spouse who is a stay at home mum to two young children and how she finds herself unravelling.

Maybe it's a side-effect of reading this book in lockdown, but I found Little Bandaged Days intensely claustrophobic. The depiction of isolation, of slowly recessing deeper into the shadows of your own mind, felt so real, I found it almost hard to read, as if I might be swept along with it.

Wilder has a wonderful way with words: it's the kind of prose you could spend hours unpicking. The plot is pretty predictable - you know from the start how it's going to end - but in many ways this inevitability only makes the denouement more poignant.

Compelling and oppressive, Little Bandaged Days is a smart exploration of the self-destructive selflessness of motherhood.

This book had me torn in two directions - hating it and liking it. The author irritated me with her lack of character names - just an initial. It’s hard work when you have to make up a name and then stick to it through the whole book so you don’t confuse yourself as you’re reading.... The other irritant was how she repeatedly repeated phrases to get the word count up. A page and a half of the same three words is very excessive.
On a good note, it was beautifully written, the detail was exquisite. A sad story which left me feeling like more could have been done to help the main character.

This book was enjoyable but confusing at times. This book is definitely different to anything I've read before and I believe the author deserves some credit for that, she's made something unique and different. However, I'm not sure I even really know the context of what happened throughout the book even now I'm finished. I started this book off feeling extremely sorry for this woman, her husband was useless and left her to look after two young children while he swanned off to do what he wanted. About a quarter of the way through the book when the other POV started, I thought I knew where this book was headed, however I was wrong. I think the way this book is written can be quite confusing and make you believe the plot is heading somewhere else. I enjoyed the suspicion that was paced throughout the book but by halfway I was growing bored of it and just wanted to find out what was happening. The ending was not what I was expecting and not at all what I hoped for, I rated the book 3 stars and did enjoy it to a certain degree but definitely felt like it was missing something.

Sometimes motherhood can be the most solitary thing ever. Yeah, you have the company of the kiddos, but you sleep in fragmets and days easily blend into one. If you dont have someone adult to talk to, life can easily become a set of to do lists and a blur of inner monologues. And this is what this book talks about. ⠀
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In a form of a monologue, we follow the days in life of a woman in the foreign country raising two little kids while her husband works days and nights. How easily the lack of sleep can make one delusional? Where is the boundary between imagination and reality? What is real and what isnt? ⠀
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So familiar are the daily things the main character goes through, but then again, so scary. Through the whole book you cannot escape the feeling that something will go wrong, and the dreadfulness of it just builds up. Even though you fear turning every page expecting that it all comes tumbling down, you cannot not hope for it to all resolve and end well. But, does it? One can never know. ⠀
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Even though its a short one, it could be shortened even a bit more - I think it would only add to the impact. All in all, a great debut novel I can easily recommend. ⠀

Big thnx to NetGalley and the publisher of an ARC of this ebook.
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An unusual, disturbing, depressing novel .... witnessing the slow descent into what can only be described as madness. This is reality, not for the faint hearted, which might take some readers a little out their comfort zone.

Little Bandaged Days is the story of a young mother, who with her husband and two children move from the US to Geneva. The husband is quickly immersed into his work environment where he spends almost all his time, leaving his wife alone at home with their two young children. She doesn't speak the local language, so even routine tasks are difficult for her to manage. Her once mild anxiety worsens, as she spends her days alone with the children and her paranoia increases with every moment. What we witness as a reader is a slow and sure descent into what can only be described as madness.

Written in the first person, with a dreamlike quality, you are never quite sure what is real and what is imagined. With a mounting sense of unease and dread we are taken to an inevitable point where everything falls apart. My one hate was the use of initials (“M”, “E”, “B”) for the family, instead of using their names.

To keep up your spirits whilst reading, it might be as well to recall an early quote: “Happiness is a choice, only sometimes we have to hold it very tight and keep choosing it”.