Underbelly
Underbelly by Anna Whitehouse.
The dark truth behind the filtered surface of the lives of two mums brought together in the playground…
This fictional story cuts through the filtered surface of the lives of two strong yet flawed mothers with very different backgrounds who are brought together purely through the friendship forged by their children. Loneliness and the desperation to give everything to their children unite Lo, a middle-class mother and Instagram influencer, and Dylan, who is only just surviving on her zero-hours telemarking job. I found this darkly voyeuristic book, that starts in hospital with someone at the end of their life, un-put-downable.
Underbelly sucked me into the heady complex cocktail of emotions and dopamine highs and lows that live alongside post-natal depression, unresolved trauma and other stresses of two women thrown together in the playground. This debut novel is written by Anna Whitehouse, the fiction-writing pseudonym for the journalists Anna Whitehouse and Matt Farquharson, who are co-founders of the parenting website Mother Pukka and the Flex Appeal campaign for flexible working. The book is an insight into the anxiety behind humans who become platforms that are desperately keeping up with the algorithm.
The narrative covers many issues from poverty, fertility, domestic abuse, self-harm, marriage and solo-parenting. It is an eye opener about the pitfalls of living an Insta-life and the fickleness of the likes and followers that can simultaneously catapult someone’s life to success and destruction. Underbelly is a must read for anyone who finds themselves mindlessly lost in the scroll-hole of social media.
What I wanted:
I had no idea what to expect having read a couple of mixed reviews, but the book’s honesty of how vulnerable life online can be woke me up to the dangerous impact of social media and the importance of putting smart phones down and living a face-to-face life.
What I loved:
As hard as it was to accept, I appreciated the reminder that if adults struggle to live an online life fuelled by the desire for money and connection… then we must do more to look after our children growing up in this complex crossroads between online lives and the 3D human connection that we all need.
“With this book, we wanted to delve into the complexity of female friendships under the glare of a smartphone.”
Anna Whitehouse
Instagram & Twitter: @mother_pukka
Related websites: www.motherpukka.co.uk & www.motherpukka.co.uk/flex/