To mark the release of her second novel, Natural Disaster, Lisa Owens shares with us her five favourite books on motherhood. From the joys and challenges of single motherhood to unexpected loss and second chances, these novels explore the complexity and enduring love of the mother-child bond.

Motherhood is an inherently paradoxical state, forever toggling between utterly mundane concerns and profoundly existential ones. It occupies a similarly complicated place in our culture, where it’s frequently both trivialised and revered.

Writing about motherhood in my new novel Natural Disaster required steeling myself against two almost comically conflicting fears: firstly, that no one would be interested in reading about something so banal, and secondly that I’d be eaten alive for presuming to take on such a charged and monolithic subject.

Fortunately, there are plenty of authors out there who have already proven what compelling, fruitful and nuanced territory it can be. For me, the best novels about motherhood are those that engage with its contradictions and grapple with the endlessly perplexing question of whether and how on earth they might be reconciled.

I first read The Millstone in my early twenties, and remember being impressed by the protagonist Rosamund’s pluck and grit in choosing to raise a baby on her own in 1960s London. I loved her funny, intimate and intelligent voice, and how the sexual and romantic inexperience that led to her pregnancy suddenly become irrelevant when she gives birth.

When I read it again after having children myself, I could completely relate to the force and ferocity of Rosamund’s love for her baby Octavia. Drabble doesn’t idealise motherhood and is candid about its challenges (especially for the single parent), but she is also wonderful at portraying the bliss and joy to be found amid the turmoil.

Anne Enright is one of our great chroniclers of family life. At the heart of The Wren, The Wren is the relationship between Carmel and her daughter Nell, whose lives have been shaped in different ways by the legacy of Carmel’s father Phil, a celebrated Irish poet with a deeply problematic private life.

Enright nails the gulf between the generations – Carmel’s brisk, no-nonsense affect starkly contrasts with Nell’s more expansive, internet-infused worldview. Their dynamic crackles and sparks with painfully believable frustration and exasperation: Nell’s desire for independence and separation is poignantly at odds with Carmel’s animal protectiveness, but the cast-iron strength of their bond is never in doubt.

Yiyun Li dedicated this novel to the memory of her son Vincent who died by suicide as a teenager. In it, a grieving writer strikes up a dialogue with her son Nikolai in the aftermath of Nikolai’s suicide. While undeniably devastating, there is amazing clarity, beauty and even playfulness in the way Li opens up a space for the mother to continue communing with her son in death.

It’s unlike anything else I’ve ever read: a deeply philosophical and generous work that considers the power and immutability of the mother-child relationship beyond the parameters in which we traditionally think about it.

This novel became an instant favourite when I first encountered it a few years ago, and it’s one I keep returning to – a rarity when reading time already feels so scarce.

The narrator Ruth is an English teacher who, fearing for her granddaughter Lily’s safety, takes her in as a baby and raises her as her own. Lily’s mother Eleanor (Ruth’s daughter) is a drug addict and the narrative is incredibly deft in the way it navigates Ruth’s blind spots and guilt around her parenting and treatment of Eleanor.

Boyt has a real talent for capturing the pleasure in little domestic rituals, and there is great comfort and delight in Ruth and Lily’s life together, but the darker context of their situation is always close at hand. Loved and Missed is a rich, complex, elegant novel about second chances, but also the long shadow cast by the less successful ones that came before.

I loved Claire Lynch’s memoir, Small: On Motherhoods and was thrilled when I heard she had written a novel. A Family Matter moves between two timelines: the present day, where a woman named Maggie is coming to terms with her father Heron’s terminal illness, and the early 1980s, where Maggie’s mother Dawn, then married to Heron, begins a relationship with a local teacher – a woman named Hazel.

The consequences are severe and far-reaching: Maggie grows up believing her mother chose to leave her in favour of a new partner, when in fact the homophobic legal landscape at the time rendered Dawn completely powerless in the battle for custody of Maggie. Lynch is especially good at portraying the ordinary, unassuming moments of intimacy that comprise a happy, fulfilled home life, which makes the cost for Dawn – the loss of her daughter – in wanting something so reasonable all the more shattering.