Little Bandaged Days

By: Kyra Wilder

Narrated by: Laurel Lefkow

‘Wilder artfully cranks up the tension, so you don't quite know when you begin to hold your breath. A chilling read’ - Oyinkan Braithwaite, author of My Sister, The Serial Killer.

A mother moves to Geneva with her husband and their two young children. In their beautiful new rented apartment, surrounded by their rented furniture, and several Swiss instructions to maintain quiet, she finds herself totally isolated. Her husband’s job means he is almost never present, and her entire world is caring for her children – making sure they are happy, and fed and comfortable, and that they can be seen as the happy, well-fed, comfortable family they should be. Everything is perfect.

But, of course, it’s not. The isolation, the sleeplessness, the demands of two people under two, are getting to Erika. She has never been so alone, and once the children are asleep, there are just too many hours to fill until morning . . .

Kyra Wilder’s Little Bandaged Days is a beautifully written, painfully claustrophobic story about a woman’s descent into madness. Unpredictable, frighteningly compelling and brutally honest, it grapples with the harsh conditions of motherhood and this mother’s own identity, and as the novel continues, we begin to wonder just what exactly Erika might be driven to do.

Critic reviews

Gripping, composed, observant, wonderfully written and extravagantly cruel.

Wilder artfully cranks up the tension, so you don't quite know when you begin to hold your breath. A chilling read (Oyinkan Braithwaite (author of My Sister, The Serial Killer))

Little Bandaged Days showcases the breathtaking new talent of Kyra Wilder. This is a compelling tale of a woman’s slide into madness, all while living what seems to be the perfect life. Part metaphor for modern life, part lament for the lost wildness of life, this novel demonstrates both writing chops and deeper themes. Wilder is a writer to watch (Rene Denfeld (author of The Child Finder))

I found it horribly seductive and almost read it through my fingers with a level of recognition and dread. Any mother of young children will recognise the fringes of the feelings evoked by such clear pellucid prose and startling imagery. It's a fantastically visceral and vivid account of the onset of madness set against the backdrop of a polite, middle-class setting: the mundane refracted through the hallucinatory (Lesley Glaister)