RaveThe Times (UK)With its brutal honesty, marital gripes and trip inside one frazzled mother’s brain, Natural Disaster is reminiscent of Claire Kilroy’s excellent 2023 novel Soldier, Sailor, but it is also very, very funny ... I read Natural Disaster each evening with much the same feeling -— of nursery-gates solidarity, sure, but a lovely helping of schadenfreude too. Bliss.
Judd Apatow
RaveThe Independent (UK)Coming in at a nerdily detailed 500 pages, it is a lifetime\'s labour of love for the artform ... As with a perfect stand-up set, it\'s hard to pick out highlights, though the sheer size and relentless Q&A style means it\'s more suited to dipping in and out of. There are jaw-dropping anecdotes aplenty ... It\'s the whys and wherefores of comedy that make this a Bible for all aspiring comics and their fans.
Laura van den Berg
PositiveThe Independent (UK)Van den Berg’s great talent is taking quite outlandish situations – a sister visits the site of an explosion in Antarctica to collect her dead brother’s belongings, or a heartbroken woman parties with a troupe of French acrobats on the day her marriage falls apart – and boiling them down to a universal emotional essence ... Her style is spare, almost brutally so, with a flair for an intriguing opening line ... An unusually compelling collection.
