I think this is in my top 5 worst books I’ve ever read. It had a little bit of the vibes of Like a House on Fire by Lauren McBrayer, but it was poorly written and unsexy. Filled with unlikeable white rich to upper middle class people who do detestable things. It also featured an underdeveloped person of color immigrant character. Trigger warnings abound including sexual assault, pregnancy loss, refusal to seek scientific medical treatment, and child harm.

Lump by Nathan Whitlock is a book that requires careful consideration while reading or an important detail can be missed.

After reading the synopsis I was so excited to read this, but it was a miss for me. I thought it would be more humorous but by then end I was just so angry at every single character for acting the way they did. The story didn’t pick up for a long time and once it did I felt like it went too fast and sort of skipped over the bigger plot points.

I can’t imagine having so many life changing things happen to you and your first instinct is to run away. Justice for Isabelle and Silas. And Claudia too, dang.

Not my usual read but as a mother I thought I would find it funny... I found it a bit cringey to be honest. It was an OK read but not one I would recommend,

To be honest, the cover easily swept me to request this then I eventually got accepted. It was a rapid movement of grasping what to do in a unfortunate yet unforgettable experiences. I'll definitely think that it could have been more highly executed. If given an opportunity, I'll get a finished copy of this one and read it again.

I have to start by saying I'm not sure what the point was of Lump. Described as a satirical look at a marriage that falls apart at the same time as a pregnancy and cancer diagnosis, the book just fell flat for me. There were multiple POV's which instead of pushing the story along just stalled it for me.

The husband and wife were both irritating and the husband lacked even one good quality. He lost his job because he groped a coworker and then just seemed to drink all day and daydream about women other than his wife. Cat for her part at least appears care for their two kids but when she finds out she is not only pregnant with another child she doesn't want but has breast cancer, she goes off the deep end.

Then there is their housekeeper, Not really sure why we need her POV except to complain about rich people and to show the difference in the way people live. I've read much better stories that emphasize the wage gap.

I have to point out that I am a breast cancer survivor, so for the life of me (literally), I don't understand Cat's reaction to her having cancer. For that matter, with so many POV's, Whitlock should have added Meridith's, I don't understand how she had so much control over a woman she barely knew or how she could just watch her waste away. This is not a typical result to breast cancer diagnosis.

The prose were well-written but I couldn't get past the annoying characters and the lack of direction of the story. I think it would have been told better in the third person instead of the POV's.

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC.

This was a tough one to get through.
For the first 25 percent of this book I was pleasantly surprised with how much I was enjoying it. It felt like the author, Nathan Whitlock, was diving head first into intriguing and entertaining relationship dynamics and the inner monologue of distinctly unique characters.
The story moved in a direction I wasn't expecting, which was surprising and a bit disappointing. I feel that as the reader, we were denied the opportunity to continue one with the most interesting character of within the story due to changing perspectives and story focus. The book would have been much more satisfying had we continued on with this character's perspective while also getting the perspective of others.
Though I didn't love the direction of the last 30 percent of the book, I can't deny my appreciation for Whitlock's writing and character development.
This is one of the more unique books I've read lately and I applaud that while also wanting to caution potential readers that while you will be entertained and will have the opportunity to explore character depth within this book, the direction of the story and its ending do not tie things up with a pretty bow.

Thank you to the author, Dundurn Press, Rare Machines and NetGalley, for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Billled as darkly satirical, this story is supposedly about a woman whose life implodes when she gets three lifechangingly bad pieces of news in one day. It's told in multiple POVs that seem to go in and out fairly randomly, and the flow is disturbed by many abrupt jumps with little to no follow-through. After the intro into the story, and being hit one after the other with news of betrayal on various fronts, the female main character effectively disappears out of the story. There are way too many loose threads, the characters are stereotypically awful across the board and I regret the time I spent reading this book.

What do you do when you are diagnosed with cancer, you're pregnant, there's not enough money coming in, you have two little children to raise, and your husband is a creep? LUMP by Nathan Whitlock is one exploration of that terrible reality in the character of Cat, the woman with the weight of the world on her shoulders. I enjoyed the multiple perspectives and interwoven plot lines, the setting of Toronto, and the everyday realities we all face, not generally so bleak and terrible. However, I did find it incredible that Cat put up with so much from her jerk of a husband and some of the other turns of plot also felt contrived. I received a copy of this book and these thoughts are my own, unbiased opinions.

Lump starts as an engaging domestic comedy about a middle-class Toronto family. Cat Joseph is dealing with familiar issues – caring for two small children while managing her web design business, and keeping the family’s finances together. Meanwhile her privileged and feckless husband, Donovan, swans around various local eateries, talking airily about a hypothetical future enterprise.

Events take a darker turn when Cat learns that she is pregnant and she has a malignant tumour on her breast. And that her husband is a creep. Something has to change – and the change Cat makes has massive consequences for them all.

Lump is narrated from a number of points of view – some close to the family, some more remote, but each of their small acts and omissions impacts on the fate of Cat and her family.

Lump keeps the reader pleasingly off balance. The characters are real and believable with minds of their own, including the children (even the dog-as-narrator does okay). I particularly enjoyed the narration of the family’s cleaner, Lena, a recent immigrant who has many wry observations on the oddities of Toronto life and reacts with resilience to the blows that life (and Cat’s family) deal her.

Apart from being glad I’ve never had children, the strongest response Cat evoked in me was the desire to shake her. (Don’t we all know a Cat in real life?) Why does she tolerate so much from her husband?

Throughout her life she seems to have been passive and always cave into selfish, manipulative characters. This is most obvious with Donovan, but we also see it with her sister, Claudia. The question which propels the story is whether she can break free of this trait.

The interleaving of comic set pieces and some horrific moments only highlights Cat’s heightened state and sense of isolation. Lump is funny, shocking and moving in equal measure.
*
I received a copy of Lump from the publisher via NetGalley.

Another one I really wanted to like but I just didn’t connect with anything. There was no one in here that I really wanted to root for, despite the very many perspectives (some, I found unnecessary). There’s also some plot points that I still question the relevancy of. But I still read to the end because I wanted to see where it was going and I do like books set in and around Toronto.

A decent read, the comedy was enough, and the storylines running in parallel were appreciative. Alternating from one perspective to another every chapter was entertaining.

The main character, Cat, is diagnosed with cancer in the middle of an unexpected pregnancy. She already has two small children; and with an absent husband and a meagre income, it is getting harder and harder to cope. She can only see one solution through the chaos: run away to her client’s house.

There are some family issues running in the background, her husband has problems in the workplace which involve a lawyer, and cancer is discussed rather strangely as a disease. It seemed like the characters, Cat and her eccentric client, didn’t take the illness as seriously as it should’ve been taken. However, given the novel is a satire with dark comedy maybe that was the point. The book also contained some scenes- like consent and extra-marital affairs- that seemed crass but still conformed to the satirical atmosphere.

Altogether, the book was written well for its genre and was appealing enough to keep reading.

I like weird books and dark humor so this description seemed right up my alley. The problem is it's not very funny. The characters are unlikable and I didn't get attached to even Cat, our main character. She finds out she has breast cancer and she's pregnant on the same day, and she's got a husband who is a creep. The story jumps around and we get different points of view that aren't necessary.

I can't recommend this book.

A peek into a woman feeling serious dissatisfaction with her marriage and life choices to include having children. If that isn't enough as is, her husband loses his job, she might be pregnant for a third time, and she is having weird body pains and has found a lump. When it rains, it pours. And for Cat, it's torrential.
The husband, Donovan, is a real jerk and deserved to be sacked. But hides this from his wife until she is already fighting with her own demons that she isn't sharing with him.
When Cat finally has her breakdown moment, she finds herself at her client's home (Cat designs websites) that of the rich local Matron of Yoga. The mantra of mind over manner, stretching, and healthy eating can prove fatal but it seems to be just what Cat wants, if not needs. She has left her family with barely a word.
First world problems are rampant in the Lump one of which is the treatment of domestic help. There is a side story of Cat and Donovan's housekeeper who has her own issues but is basically invisible.
Marketed as a dark comedy, I really couldn't find anything funny. It's ok to bring the jokes to the dark moments as a way of coping, but I didn't find the humor within the pages. The ending came abruptly and left quite a bit on the table.

Thank you to PW Grab-a-Galley for my copy via Netgalley. All opinions are mine.

This is not necessarily a book I would have kept reading had I picked it up at a bookstore. My first thought was that it was clever and flippant. But because it was an ARC I did keep reading. And it got deeper and more complicated and less clever and flippant.

To say I liked it isn’t really right, because the people in it aren’t terribly likable and the situation is definitely not likable. But it’s good. It’s about family, and illness, and the secrets people keep from the ones they love. The main characters make some very poor choices. It’s messy and sometimes gross and occasionally icky. With moments of grace and truth and beauty. Sometimes I t’s even funny.

Thank you Nathan Whitlock, Dundurn Press and NetGalley for allowing me to read this ARC e-book. As a mom you can have bad days but we all know there can be those snowball effect days where all day you are trying to put out fire and questioning how much more you can handle while also thinking running away seems to be the only escape.... Well in this dark, funny look into one mothers life that is exactly what she does. This book is told from multiple view points one even coming from an old dog. And honestly I felt so much in this book... solidarity fir one but every emotion possible and as a mother I really enjoyed it and even found myself laughing out loud.

The book could have been better. The characters were easy to understand but lacked depth and emotion. The ending was not satisfying and left room for more improvement.

It feels very unfinished, the characters were easy to follow but there was no true depth of heart. The whole entire book was wrapped up in one sentence at the end and it could have been so much more than that.

Fantastic! Clear and quirky. The ending was an abrupt left turn.
The smorgasbord of characters move the narrative along quickly, then slowly, then super fast.
There are characters who are unlikeable and downright despicable. The setting was so rich and blue and easy to fall into. I'd read again and I'd read more from this author.

My Rating: 1/5 stars

Nathan Whitlocks latest novel is blurbed as “a darkly satirical contemporary story about marriage, motherhood, class, and cancer. Told through multiple perspectives from the people that surround her, we follow the unraveling of a woman’s life after she receives 3 lifechanging pieces of news in a single day: her husband is cheating, she’s pregnant, and that strange lump in her breast is cancerous.
Despite that bold set-up, and the fact that I’m not against a good piece of dark comedy, Lump takes the lead as my worst read of 2023 thus far. As a “casual reader” I simply found nothing to enjoy about it. As a cancer-survivor and sensitivity reader on the topic, I actually detested it.

I have many thoughts on this book, so will try to keep this as concise as possible. I think the author had an interesting idea on the story he wanted to tell. My dislike boils down to the way he chose to do so, specifically to three elements: the satire/humor, the characters, and the overarching question of “who is telling this story” that kept nagging me. Let’s break it down:


The satire/humor:
Let me preface this by saying that I’m not of the opinion that “you don’t joke about cancer”. I’ve personally joked about cancer whilst having (had) cancer, and I believe humor can be a healthy way to work through big life events, if it’s done in good faith. Lump just wasn’t funny to me.
Much of its satire relies on very tried and tired tropes of “dunking on privileged upper-middle class folks” and the stereotypes that come with that. All the men are immature pigs that think with an organ located a bit lower than their brain. All the women are shallow and seem to lack a brain all together… Good satire can shine in its ability to hold up a mirror in which we can see ourselves/our situations from a different perspective. Lump presents an angle we’ve seen time and time again, bringing nothing new to the table, and thereby losing its sting.

The characters:
going hand in hand with the previous point; almost every character is a detestable stereotype of themselves. It makes it difficult to relate to them, despite sometimes genuinely commiserative circumstances. It also often had me questioning which part of their stereotype was meant to be funny, and which part was the author actually thinking this is the way women talk to each other. Take this gem of a quote from one character, commenting on the other women in her yoga-class.

“Every woman out there looks like a fuck-bot. They all have toddlers with them, but they’re as skinny as rakes. I bet they get C-sections so they don’t get stretched out.”

I honestly cannot tell if this is meant as a joke for the reader to be in on (in which case, it’s a tasteless one), or if this is actually just a thinly veiled bad take by the author… Do their choices seem ridiculous for comedy-sake, or just because their motivations are poorly developed.
Cat is the only character equipped with at least some potential, yet she’s strangely underused, despite being the focal point of the story. Her POV makes up less than half of the novel, and we strangely cut away to side characters at vital points in her story, only to skip back to her, far after the important event has taken place off-page.
Large parts of Cat’s story feel unresolved and messy because of these jump-cuts. Most notably; her entire character arc is left unresolved in the end because of a similar time-skip.

Who is telling this story?
The odd POV-choices led me to an even bigger question however; who’s story is actually being told here, and by who? That all ties in to my ultimate dislike, and reason for rating it a 1-star.
As a cancer-survivor, I love to read stories from people to have a story to tell about cancer, and its impacts on a life. Nathan Whitlock didn’t have that. He wanted to tell a story about marriage, privilege etc., and used cancer as a plot-point- a catalyst- in it. There is something inherently disingenuous about a healthy man (with no personal experience with cancer at the time of writing this novel), writing a story about a woman with cancer. Breast-cancer, mind you…
To his credit: Whitlock actually addresses this in his foreword. He mentions being diagnosed with cancer himself after writing Lump, and feeling like it was a kind of karmic justice for writing a story that wasn’t his originally. I’m sorry for his experience, and I feel horrible he felt this way about his story looking back. It still doesn’t change the bitter aftertaste the story left in my mouth personally.

I’ve spoken about the use of cancer as a vehicle to add a layer of emotion to a different story, many times before now. It’s a topic I’m sensitive to, as it feels exploitative of something so lifechanging. In many ways, Lump reminded me of a Dutch novel Komt een Vrouw bij de Dokter, in which a man goes on a cheating-spree which he justifies because of his grief over his wife’s recent cancer-diagnosis. It’s one of my most hated books ever, and Lump gave me some of those same feelings of exploitation and emotional manipulation.

Overall, I appreciate the attempt and the risks this author took, but I cannot recommend it with a clear conscious.

Many thanks to Dundurn Press for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.