Helen Walsh certainly doesn't shy away from writing about difficult subject matters. I read The Lemon Grove last month and liked it, and I remembered I had Go To Sleep on my Kindle. I bought it before I had my baby (now 6 months) but I think if I had read it then I just wouldn't have got it.

Rachel Massey is pregnant at the start of the book. After a traumatic birth she becomes single mother to baby Joe. But Joe doesn't sleep well and Rachel quickly becomes exhausted and starts hallucinating. She finds Joe so hard to cope with.

I identified with quite a bit of this novel and found myself highlighting bits on my Kindle. I felt a lot of sympathy for Rachel but it was hard to read about some of her actions. Something happens towards the end of the book that gave me such a sense of foreboding and brought tears to my eyes. This is an excellent read, very well-written and about a difficult and emotional subject matter. Perhaps this should be read alongside parenting manuals to show that life isn't lived according to textbooks. ( )