Published in 2021
8 hours and 35 minutes
Polly Ho-Yen lives in Bristol with her husband. She used to be a primary-school teacher and now writes fiction for children (9-12 year olds) with a sci-fi or fantasy twist. She has been shortlisted for the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize and the Blue Peter Book Award. This is her first adult novel.
What is this book about?
For fans of Black Mirror and The Handmaid’s Tale, in Dark Lullaby a mother desperately tries to keep her family together in a society where parenting standards are strictly monitored.
Kit is an ‘out’, she doesn’t want children. Infertility is universal, and she has witnessed the agonies of her friends and sister going through the painful and dangerous fertility treatment, Induction and then struggling to keep their babies, and cannot face going through it herself. But then she meets Thomas, and gradually the idea of a baby becomes more and more important. She and Thomas go through Induction and have a baby girl, Mimi. At first everything goes well, but then the small mistakes, ISPs (Insufficient Standard of Parenting), build up and suddenly Kit is face to face with the idea of losing Mimi, and she is forced to ask herself how far she will go to keep her family together.
