A really good read - The Herd
The Herd by Emily Edwards
When you’re deep in the parenting trenches, just making it through to the end of the day with each child safely tucked in bed, all limbs in tact, at least vaguely clean, having been as suitably nourished as possible and delivered to and collected from wherever they’ve need to be roughly on schedule, feels like a triumph. And that’s just the day to day stuff.
But it’s the bigger stuff - TV/screen time, discouraging/punishing bad or aggressive behaviour, sibling rivalry, health management, those sorts of things - that is always more challenging, not least because you need to decide, and agree between you as parents on what approach you want to take. And then stick to it.
It’s one of those big issues that is the focus of the The Herd (which I read whilst I was away on my recent holiday in Costa Rica). The health management one. Specifically the issue of childhood vaccinations. And more specifically, the rights and wrongs of expecting parents to give their children vaccines in order to protect the wider community even when they object to them, or simply don’t want to.
We are introduced to Bryony and Elizabeth, lifelong friends who are godmothers to each other’s children and as un-alike as “cheese and pineapple - a weird unexpected pairing that just worked”
Bryony is bohemian and artistic, with a severely autistic brother, something their mother blames firmly on his childhood inoculations. Ambitious, career-driven Elizabeth has been a stay-at-home mother since the birth of her third child, a daughter called Clemmie, who suffered from fits as a baby and who Elizabeth has been fiercely protective of ever since. A protectiveness that extends to not having Clemmie vaccinated.
When Elizabeth plans a party for Clemmie’s birthday, she sends all the parents an email asking whether their child has been vaccinated, reminding them that her own little girl hasn’t been on account of her baby seizures.
It’s a subject the two friends have never discussed, so Elizabeth doesn’t know that Bryony’s little girl, Alba, hasn’t had her jab either. And when Elizabeth asks Bryony directly, the half-truth she tells her in response sets in train a series of events that have disastrous consequences, culminating with the two women confronting each other in court.
The Herd is a first novel for author Emily Edwards who came up with the idea when she was 8 months pregnant with her first child and had an impassioned debate with her birth doula over vaccinating her soon-to-be-born baby (her husband was pro, the doula was against).
Emily Edwards, author of The Herd. Photo by Adam Luszniak
The book isn’t perfectly written, the plotting and exposition is clunky and lacking in nuance in places, but the moral complexities of the emotionally charged, controversial issue are thoughtfully and relatably explored though the two women, their husbands, and a cast of supporting characters.
Emily does an at times exhaustingly good job of conveying the roller coaster of emotions experienced by Elizabeth and Bryony, and she doesn’t shy away from the controversial opinions that swirl around this potentially deeply divisive issue, showing sympathetically how there are no hard and fast rights and wrongs when it comes to the subject of vaccinations.
The Herd isn’t an easy read, but it is a timely, compelling, though-provoking and necessary one.
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