There is a scene in Kate Lyons’s The Corner of Your Eye in which the narrator, Lucy, watches her daughter, Flo, being comforted over the death of a bird by their kind but bumbling friend, Archie. As Archie soothes Flo, hugging her and talking to her about what they will do next, Lucy stands apart, not knowing how to act. She feels negligent and guilty: ‘I felt like a pretend mother,’ she says. ‘A bloodless cut out.’

The travails of motherhood and the emotional pressures it creates are defining themes in these two new novels by young women writers. There are some striking similarities between the novels’ protagonists. Elizabeth, the central character in Tegan Bennett Daylight’s Safety, shares with Lucy a reluctance to engage with others, even those closest to her. But it is the differences between them that are significant. While both novels examine maternal experiences, they draw on very different ideas about femininity and the expectations created by intimacy.