Between the Pages with Nancy Peach: Confronting The Mother of All Problems and how women are doing it all (literally)

A chorus of overlapping feminine vocals sing the trending song, ‘Too Much Labour’, written by Paris Paloma, as it litters the online explore pages of women users. The song, detailing the unpaid work of women and mothers everywhere, turns female rage into a melody, with lyrics such as: ‘all day, every day, therapist, mother, maid, nymph then a virgin, nurse then a servant.’  It has sparked a conversation that has been brewing for some time: why are women expected to take on so much, and when will the break come?

 

In her latest book, The Mother of All Problems, Nancy Peach has thrown her writing into the deep end of this conversation. As a writer of women’s fiction, a mother of three, an owner of various (in her own words) ridiculous-looking pets, and a practicing doctor working for the NHS – she knows everything about tackling a massive workload. In her book, we see her protagonist character, Penny Baker, a mother juggling her household, her children, her husband, and her own work. Through her, Nancy has channelled all women who feel invisible, overworked, and simply doing Too Much Labour. Penny’s story only becomes more difficult as her own mother is diagnosed with dementia and her home is thrown into disarray.

 

Penny needs a break. Penny is all of us. Now, Nancy goes between the pages with Hera to discuss the taxing roles women take on, the inspirations for her writing, and how she has managed to weave in huge amounts of humour despite the challenging topics.

Where did the idea for the book stem from? 

 

I’ve been writing for a long time, and I’ve often used books as a form of unofficial therapy. Being able to immerse yourself in another world, whether written by yourself or someone else, is enormously freeing when the stresses of life build up, and both reading and writing have stood me in good stead over the years of medical school and working in the NHS. But the moment that writing really ‘saved’ me (excuse the melodrama) was when my mum was diagnosed with young onset dementia.

It’s hard to describe the peculiar isolation you feel when a parent is landed with this sort of diagnosis. My mum was only sixty when her brain scan confirmed that she had Alzheimer’s Disease and I was thirty-five with three young children. My peer group had not yet entered the phase of ‘caring for an elderly parent’ – my friends’ parents were newly-retired Baby Boomers, jetting off around the world on mini-breaks and cruises, playing golf and generally having the time of their lives. They were not yet staring down the barrel of cognitive decline, residential care and incontinence.

 

So, I felt alone. Despite my close family and the support of my sister (without whom surviving this process would have been unthinkable) I felt that nobody else really understood what it was like to face this slow bereavement.

 

I searched the internet but the dearth of relevant, accessible information about dementia seemed totally out of keeping with the soaring rates of the disease. Perhaps I wasn’t looking hard enough – but who wants to look hard for this stuff when you’ve got so much else to worry about on a daily basis? I just wanted to hear about somebody like me and to understand how they were coping. I needed a clear, perspective on how it felt to watch your parent lose their grip on reality without losing yours.  And an acknowledgement that there are tiny moments of comedy to be found lurking in the mire of Alzheimer’s Disease.

 

And so, because I couldn’t find a blog like this – I decided to write one myself. I had no experience of blogging and prior to that point, zero interest in social media; I found the idea of Twitter terrifying and Instagram completely baffling - I didn’t even have a Facebook account. But I started small and wrote under a pseudonym. That way I had a layer of psychological protection from the trolls and the freedom to write the absolute truth in all its ludicrous, dark glory. The more I wrote the more I connected with people – every post drew comments along the lines of, ‘thank you for sharing – I feel like this too.’ I set up social media accounts so that I could promote the blog and I found new friends on Twitter, tips from dementia carers, words of encouragement and support. I realised that far from being alone, I was in fact part of an enormous, global network of carers, and that in writing my blog I was actually giving some of these people a voice.

 

A few of my regular followers had suggested that I write a book and I found I was reaching a point with the blog where documenting the hard reality of Mum’s decline was becoming depressing. A retreat back into fiction seemed both inevitable and welcome. I was already in the process of approaching agents with what would go on to become my debut, Love Life (a rom-com set in a hospice) but there had always been an idea niggling away at me to base a novel on the slightly bonkers life I was already leading. I wanted to tell the story of a normal woman in the sandwich generation, stuck between caring roles for family members at both ends of the age spectrum. I wanted to draw out the highs and laugh at the lows. And thus, The Mother of All Problems was born. I originally called the book Sandwich as a nod to its roots and submitted the first chapters to a national writing competition that was still in its relative infancy – the Comedy Women In Print awards run by Helen Lederer. Being longlisted in the unpublished category felt like a wonderful endorsement of my story and the kick I needed to complete the book.  

 

 

You mention female identity as a key theme of the book.  Can you tell us a bit more about this?

 

TMOAP focuses on women. It is unashamedly women’s commercial fiction written by a woman and aimed at other women, although I genuinely hope men will enjoy it too – I’m all for inclusivity. I find female identity interesting (if unexpectedly complex in modern discourse) and I wanted to celebrate the strength of female relationships, whether between friends, family, or loose acquaintances, as well as shining a light on those quietly powerful women who hold communities together. The unassuming middle-aged mum is rarely held up as a hero. Youth, beauty, chastity, desirability and biddability are the characteristics society tends to venerate in its womenfolk and we don’t hear enough about strength, determination, wilfulness, creativity, wit and cunning. These traits are not seen as aspirational or inspiring and yet they are essential for most women who just want to get stuff done. I know a lot of brilliant women – often the ones multitasking the life out of everything on a daily basis – and I wanted to write about them, celebrate them, and give them a voice.

 

How have your own experiences influenced the character of Penny?

 

Out of all the characters I’ve written over the past few years, Penny is the closest to me in terms of life experience, which is probably why TMOAP is the only book I’ve written in the first person. But that’s not to say that Penny is based on me. In reality she is drawn from characteristics I see in my friends and also, to a degree, my patients. The ebbing away of confidence, the low self esteem and the blurring of roles leading to a loss of identity, are all things I’ve witnessed in my work and social life.

 

My job as a GP gives me a fairly unique insight into human behaviour and interaction, and this influences everything I write. But Mum’s diagnosis also helped me see what life is like for those outside the health system, trying to navigate care and ensure that your own family’s needs are prioritised when the state provision feels inadequate. This obviously doesn’t just apply to dementia, I have friends who work in medical fields but have chronic illnesses themselves, or those who are teachers but can’t access the appropriate education for their child who has specific learning needs – there is a peculiar frustration in failing to gain traction within a system you have prior knowledge of. I think I was able to pour some of this frustration into TMOAP whilst hopefully tempering it with a bit of humour, but if you find yourself wanting to strangle someone whilst reading it, I apologise.

 

The comedy in this book is truly laugh-out-loud. What inspired some of the humour in the story?

 

Real life is random, complex and often completely hilarious. Whenever I’m having a bad time (when it’s one of those days where the kids are kicking off and the toilet’s flooded the bathroom and the dog has destroyed my favourite pair of shoes and the car has broken down and it’s chucking it down with rain) I find myself thinking about how I will later relate the scenario to my husband and friends. I’m already turning it into an anecdote whilst I’m gnashing my teeth and railing at the injustice. I think a lot of stories develop this way – retelling a version of events edited to entertain others is how we learn and how we grow from each experience. It’s also pretty gratifying to make your friends choke on their shandy as you share your most recent tale of woe.

 

And again, my job affects how I relate those stories. It’s fair to say that my humour is dark. Medics’ humour is, by virtue of necessity, as black as it comes. As coping mechanisms go, ‘laughing in the face of adversity’ is a pretty good one if the level of adversity is a manageable three or four out of five (chortling your way through the Spanish Inquisition may not have been so successful) and it was a particularly useful skill to have in the armoury when coping with Mum’s diagnosis. Seeing the funny side of a situation diminishes the fear and frustration it would otherwise provoke and chuckling alongside someone else helps reduce the sense of isolation – so I’m a big believer in laughter being the best medicine.

 

 

As an NHS doctor, you must meet many women who feel as exhausted and as invisible as Penny.  What would your advice be to them? 

For me Penny represents a huge proportion of society, not just women, but all those who care for people at both ends of the age spectrum. Parenting is exhausting enough but add on the stress, anxiety and physical challenge of looking after older family members and you have a situation where people can silently drown under the weight of it all. I see this at work, I see it with friends, and I’ve also experienced it directly myself. My advice is to compartmentalise as much as possible. Keep the different areas of life distinct from one another. Even before Mum had dementia I used to keep very tight boundaries between work and home life. I would get in the car to drive to the practice on a Monday morning and I’d be in work mode, often so busy during the day seeing patients that I had no opportunity to think about the kids even if I wanted to dwell on whether they were happy at preschool or whether I’d remembered a packed lunch. And then when my workday finished I would try as hard as possible to slip back into ‘wife and mother’ mode on the way home. I’d often get back late but before I left the practice I would make sure that test results were chased up and any patients I had niggling concerns about would have been called and sorted or booked in for the next day. That way I reduced the number of times I was assailed by panic in the middle of a bedtime story wondering whether I’d referred Mr Jones to the cardiologist or chased Mrs Smith’s CT scan.

 

I also (and I think this is really important) made sure that I carved out a bit of time for myself. I always had a book on the go, whether reading, writing, or both, and I cherished that time like the godsend it was. Fiction was the best escapism for me but I know other people use music, art, exercise or mindfulness as their ways to wind down and reconnect – whatever works (if it’s exercise then you’re likely in a lot better shape than I am and all power to you).

 

 

 

What was the most challenging part of writing the book?

 

The joy of my situation is that writing is my escape. I think if you have a job as stressful as mine (and I’m not bigging myself up here – you have to be hard as nails to survive as an NHS GP at the moment) then any activity that allows you to feel good about yourself is a joyful reward. If writing was hard I wouldn’t do it – I genuinely don’t need more angst in my life on top of being responsible for the health of twelve thousand people.

 

The difficulty with writing comes when you decide to share it with other people and jump into the torpid waters of publishing. Having a complete stranger rip your story to shreds on a review site is brutal. I thought I was resilient (see above hard as nails comment) but rejection is baked into this business and negative critiques from readers who do not hold back in their opinions can leave you feeling eviscerated.

 

What do you hope readers will take away from reading your book?

Aching sides from laughing at top quality relatable humour, pink eyes (from the occasional cry rather than conjunctivitis), and, for all the quiet, unassuming people of the sandwich generation, a feeling of being ‘seen’ (as the youth say). Along with a lifelong love of the work of Nancy Peach, her back catalogue, and all her future novels, natch.