BURNED OUT AND ON THE VERGE OF DISASTER
Edel Coffey’s debut novel – the book everyone is talking about – deals with Forgotten Baby Syndrome, every exhausted-by-the-juggle parent’s nightmare.
Breaking Point tells of a high-powered doctor, wife and mother under pressure, who accidentally leaves her baby in a car on a boiling hot day – with tragic consequences. It was inspired by a true story which made headlines worldwide.
Many mothers are contacting journalist and author Edel with their own stories of near-misses which still haunt them. She tells City of Books podcast presenter Martina Devlin that as someone with four young children – all under the age of six at one stage – she understands the pressure.
Elsewhere in the interview, Edel reflects on how she has kept a diary since childhood when it was “all secret desires to be a writer” and today uses it to work through issues.
Breaking Point, published by Sphere, is set in New York where she has a job as a fragrance consultant when she was a 19-year-old student. Her French employers instructed her to concentrate on “le beau” at all times – and ticked her off for gift-wrapping inadequacies and not having a manicure.
However, she loved New York, and wanted to stay on, but her parents insisted she should return to Ireland and finish her degree. “I really feel there is a parallel Sliding Doors kind of life that might have happened in New York,” says Edel.
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For more on Breaking Point: https://vip7.hachette.co.uk/?s=breaking+point+edel+coffey