Lead Review (A Good Enough Mother)
- Book: A Good Enough Mother
- Location: London
- Author: Bev Thomas
I read A Good Enough Mother by Bev Thomas, shortly after I had read The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides, and felt I had had a good immersion into the therapeutic process.
In this story Ruth works in a trauma unit, attending to clients who need a high level of psychological support. Just a couple of years ago, she herself has experienced the unresolved disappearance of her son, Tom, and this event in her life has not been shared with her workplace colleagues, although her supervisor has some knowledge of the situation.
As a psychotherapist, this silence in the work place is such a risky disregard for her own psychological safety and for the well-being of the people whom she sees in s professional capacity, because such unresolved trauma on her part can affect her clinical work. At the very least there are issues of boundary setting, projection and counter-transference. And that is the seed for an unfolding drama.
A young man, Dan, arrives, who has been brutally attacked and who has an uncanny resemblance to her son, and we witness her struggle between her issues and those the client is bringing to her. We are offered snapshots of her life in her family, both past and present, of her adult relationship and how things have become fragile with her daughter (Tom’s twin). Little by little Dan reveals more about his trauma and because she is not at the top of her game, she has a tendency to to mishandle his sessions. This is compounded by the anger of another client, whom she is seeing and soon things are escalating out of control.
Everything in this novel is incredibly well observed and laid out in a confident style for the reader to appreciate. It has been billed a “thriller” but I feel this is far from the mark, as this is about the therapeutic process and the feelings that go with it. The tension is taut and maintained by the underlying story of Tom and his disappearance, the questions and unknowns and the ultimate hope that he might reappear.
This is an author who has a really natural and easy writing style and deserves a wider readership.
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